In this luminous portrait of paris, disasters, culture, the celebrated historian gives us the history, and triumphs of one of the world’s truly great cities. With a keen eye for the telling anecdote and pivotal moment, he portrays an array of vivid incidents to show us how Paris endures through each age, is altered but always emerges more brilliant and beautiful than ever.
. An ambitious and skillful narrative that covers the history of Paris with considerable brio and fervor. Los angeles times book review used book in Good Condition. While paris may be many things, it is never boring.
How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City
A century of planned development made Paris both beautiful and exciting. It gave people reasons to be out in public as never before and as nowhere else. St martins Pr. Like other european cities, it was still emerging from its medieval past. By 1700, paris had become the capital that would revolutionize our conception of the city and of urban life.
. Parisians enjoyed the earliest public transportation and street lighting, and Paris became Europe's first great walking city. Parisian urban planning showcased new kinds of streets, including the original boulevard, as well as public parks and the earliest sidewalks and bridges without houses. It became the first city to tear down its fortifications, inviting people in rather than keeping them out.
Venues opened for urban entertainment of all kinds, from opera and ballet to a pastime invented in Paris, recreational shopping. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Paris was known for isolated monuments but had not yet put its brand on urban space.
Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
A young artillery lieutenant, strolling through the Palais-Royal, observes disapprovingly the courtesans plying their trade. This is the Paris you never knew. Later that night Napoleon Bonaparte writes a meticulous account of his first sexual encounter. A particular woman catches his eye; nature takes its course.
Baudelaire, the photographer marville, charles de gaulle who is suspected of having faked an assassination attempt in Notre Dame―these and many more are Robb’s cast of characters, the real-life Mimi of La Boheme, Adolf Hitler touring the occupied capital in the company of his generals, Baron Haussmann, Proust, and the settings range from the quarries and catacombs beneath the streets to the grand monuments to the appalling suburbs ringing the city today.
The result is a resonant, intimate history with the power of a great novel. W w norton Company. For want of a map―there were no reliable ones at the time―Marie-Antoinette will go to the guillotine. 16 pages of full-color illustrations St martins Pr.
The Streets of Paris: A Guide to the City of Light Following in the Footsteps of Famous Parisians Throughout History
. From sainte-chapelle on the ile de la cite to the cemetery pere lachaise to Montmartre and the Marais, film, sculpture, music, Cahill not only brings to life the bold characters of a tumultuous history and the arts of painting, and literature, she takes you on a relaxed walking tour in the footsteps of these celebrated Parisians.
In this beautifully illustrated book, their favorite cafes, and restaurants, the scenes of their greatest triumphs and tragedies, bars, Susan Cahill recounts the lives of twenty-two famous Parisians and then takes you through the seductive streets of Paris to the quartiers where they lived and worked: their homes, and the off-the-beaten-track places where they found inspiration and love.
Each chapter opens with a beautiful four-color illustration by photographer Marion Ranoux, and every tour begins with a Metro stop and ends with a list of "Nearbys"―points of interest along the way, museums, gardens, squares, bookstores, and, churches, including cafes, of course, patisseries. W w norton Company.
St martins Pr. Griffin.
The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography
We learn how france was explored, and colonized, charted, and how the imperial influence of Paris was gradually extended throughout a kingdom of isolated towns and villages. The discovery of france explains how the modern nation came to be and how poorly understood that nation still is today. Above all, it shows how much of France―past and present―remains to be discovered.
A new york times notable book, slate Best Book, Publishers Weekly Best Book, and Booklist Editor's Choice. Griffin. A witty, engaging narrative style…Robb's approach is particularly engrossing. New york times book reviewa narrative of exploration―full of strange landscapes and even stranger inhabitants―that explains the enduring fascination of France.
16 pages of illustrations St martins Pr. While gustave eiffel was changing the skyline of Paris, large parts of France were still terra incognita. French itself was a minority language.
A History of France
With his celebrated stylistic panache and expert command of detail, intimate tone, Norwich writes in an inviting, and with a palpable affection for France. Beginning with julius caesar’s conquest of gaul in the first century bc, this study of French history comprises a cast of legendary characters―Charlemagne, Napoleon, to name a few―as Norwich chronicles France’s often violent, Louis XIV, Joan of Arc and Marie Antionette, always fascinating history.
Griffin. John julius norwich―called a “true master of narrative history” by Simon Sebag Montefiore―returns with the book he has spent his distinguished career wanting to write, A History of France: a portrait of the past two centuries of the country he loves best.
Paris to the Moon
As gopnik describes in this funny and tender book, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar journeys--both hold new routines, new languages, a new set of rules by which everyday life is lived. In 1995, adam gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light.
. W w norton Company. Griffin. Paris. With singular wit and insight, gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly delightful, often hilarious look at what it was to be an American family man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens, to enjoy a croque monsieur in a Left Bank café--a child and perhaps a father, too who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of style we Americans find so elusive.
We went to paris for a sentimental reeducation-I did anyway-even though the sentiments we were instructed in were not the ones we were expecting to learn, which I believe is why they call it an education. St martins Pr.
Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light
David lebovitz, the jagged edges, its history and its people”—mavis gallant “gives fresh poetic insight into the city… a voyage into ‘the bends and recesses, personal, author of The Sweet Life in Paris “A quirky, independent view of the city, the secret interiors’ of Paris. Departures St martins Pr.
Griffin. Random House Trade. Beautifully written and refreshingly original… makes us see Paris in a different light. San francisco chronicle book review swapping his native San Francisco for the City of Light, travel writer David Downie arrived in Paris in 1986 on a one-way ticket, his head full of romantic notions.
Broadway Books. W w norton Company. Ten books and a quarter-century later, he still spends several hours every day rambling through Paris, and writing about the city he loves. Curiosity and the legs of a cross-country runner propelled him daily from an unheated, the tombs of Père-Lachaise cemetery, seventh-floor walk-up garret near the Champs-Elysées to the old Montmartre haunts of the doomed painter Modigliani, the luxuriant alleys of the Luxembourg Gardens and the aristocratic Île Saint-Louis midstream in the Seine.
The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris
Along the way, he tells the history of Paris through a brilliant cast of characters: the favorite cafÉs of Ernest Hemingway, F. Griffin. St martins Pr. Paris, every neighborhood a new feast for the senses, is a pedestrian's city—each block a revelation, by custom and design, a place rich with history and romance at every turn.
In this enchanting memoir, acclaimed author and long- time Paris resident John Baxter remembers his yearlong experience of giving "literary walking tours" through the city. Thrust into the unlikely role of professional "literary walking tour" guide, an expat writer provides the most irresistibly witty and revealing tour of Paris in years.
W w norton Company. Harper Perennial. Random House Trade.
A Traveller's History of Paris
French or Foe?: Getting the Most Out of Visiting, Living and Working in France
