Emmanuel Todd was born on May 16, 1951, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He is the son of journalist Olivier Todd and the grandson of writer Paul Nizan. He has four children, aged 30 to 7: two girls and two boys.
He is a French political scientist, demographer, historian, sociologist, and essayist. He is a graduate of the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and holds a doctorate in history from the University of Cambridge. A research engineer at the Institut national d'études démographiques (INED), his research has led him to consider that family systems play a decisive role in the history and constitution of religious and political ideologies.

"The Defeat of the West" published by Gallimard

The implosion of the USSR set history in motion. It plunged Russia into a violent crisis. Above all, it created a global vacuum that sucked in America, itself in crisis since 1980. A paradoxical movement was then unleashed: the conquering expansion of a West that was withering at its heart. The disappearance of Protestantism led America, in stages, from neoliberalism to nihilism; and Great Britain, from financialization to the loss of its sense of humor. The zero state of religion drove the European Union to suicide, but Germany is expected to rise again. Between 2016 and 2022, Western nihilism merged with that of Ukraine, born from the decomposition of the Soviet sphere. Together, NATO and Ukraine came up against a stabilized Russia, once again a great power, now conservative, reassuring for the Rest of the World, which does not want to follow the West in its adventure. The Russian leaders decided on a battle to stop: they defied NATO and invaded Ukraine. Mobilizing the resources of critical economics, religious sociology, and anthropology of depth, Emmanuel Todd offers us a tour of the real world, from Russia to Ukraine, from the former popular democracies to Germany, from Great Britain to Scandinavia and the United States, without forgetting the Rest of the World whose choice decided the outcome of the war.