Who is Maurice Papon from Paris to the Moon and what is their importance?

Maurice Papon was once the secretary-general of the Gironde, a department or region of France, and the defendant in a long, highly publicized trial. He was accused of complicity in crimes against humanity fifty-five years earlier, during the German occupation of France in World War II. Gopnik attended and reported in the book on the last day of Papon's trial in Bordeaux and its aftermath. Papon, a voluble and unrepentant defendant, was sentenced to ten years in prison.