Unique, daring, and unforgettable, it tells the story of an ordinary family who accidentally threaten the security of a hidden civilization as intelligent as our own--a colony of ants determined to survive at any cost....Jonathan Wells and his young family have come to the Paris flat at 3, rue des Sybarites through the bequest of his eccentric late uncle Edmond. Inheriting the dusty apartment, the Wells family are left with only one warning: Never go down into the cellar.But when the family dog disappears down the basement steps, Jonathan follows--and soon his wife, his son, and various would-be rescuers vanish into its mysterious depths.Meanwhile, in a pine stump in a nearby park, a vast civilization is in turmoil. Here a young female from the russet ant nation of Bel-o-kan learns that a strange new weapon has been killing off her comrades. To find out why, she enlists the help of a warrior ant, and the two set off on separate journeys into a harsh and violent world. It is a world where death takes many forms--savage birds and voracious lizards, warlike dwarf ants and rapacious termites, poisonous beetles and, most bizarre of all, the swift, murderous, giant guardians of the edge of the world: cars.Yet the end of the female's desperate quest will be the eerie secret in the cellar at 3, rue des Sybarites--a mystery she must solve in order to fulfill her special destiny as the new queen of her own great empire. But to do so she must first make unthinkable communion with the most barbaric creatures of all. Empire of the Ants is a brilliant evocation of a hidden civilization as complex as our own and far more ancient. It is a fascinating realm where boats are built of leaves and greenflies are domesticated and milked like cows, where citizens lock antennae in "absolute communication" and fight wars with precisely coordinated armies using sprays of glue and acids that can dissolve a snail. Not since Watership Down has a novel so vividly captured the lives and struggles of a fellow species and the valuable lessons they have to teach us.From the Hardcover edition.

    Yet there was an innocence about Antoinette, thrust as a child into the chillingly formal French court.Married to the maladroit, ill-mannered Dauphin, Antoinette found pleasure in costly entertainments and garments. She spent lavishly while her overtaxed and increasingly hostile subjects blamed her for France's plight. In time Antoinette matured into a courageous Queen, and when their enemies finally closed in, Antoinette followed her inept husband to the guillotine in one last act of bravery.In To the Scaffold, Carolly Erickson provides an estimation of a lost Queen that is psychologically acute, richly detailed, and deeply moving.

    Expert historical research and fictional drama make this a glorious "big read" in the tradition of Colleen McCullough.

    Robert Polidori's sublime photographs show Versailles' architecture, interiors, and gardens, from sweeping aerial views, to grandiose views of the elaborately decorated palace ceilings, to intimate photographs of the paintings and sculptures that grace the walls and gardens. The exquisite artistry of each carefully considered decorative detail reveals Versailles in all its magnificence.The photographs show all the beauty and ornate decoration of Versailles, in every season and from every possible perspective. Polidori presents quiet, warmly-lit landscapes of the gardens and pools, dramatic visions of the colonnades, and expansive views of the vast, airy, luxurious salons. The text is a scholarly study of the history of the evolving aesthetic of this remarkable palace, attesting not only to its importance as the ultimate expression of European absolutism but also to its significance as an experimental design workshop that was to become widely influential.

    Serafina finds herself plunged into the unknown, brutal world of the North African slave states. From there, she beings the long struggle to free herself from servitude. Serafina's wit and beauty are tempered by her ruthlessness - a ruthlessness which eventually threatens to lose her both her lover and her child. Embattled by the prejudices of the age and by the ambitions of her treacherous cousin Angelo, Serafina fights against poverty, loneliness and despair, vowing to regain her lost inheritance - the Guardi silk house - at whatever cost.

    The author visited and lived among farmers, cheesemakers, ranchers, and vintners from the Pyrénnées to Alsace-Lorraine, from Normandy to Provence. The result is a stunning portrait in recipes, lively essays, and a wealth of astucesótips passed down through generations of cooks. Here are dishes prepared by lifelong cooks--not chefs--intended to satisfy, not impress."Susan Loomis's new book is that rare thing: a cookbook that expresses accurately the milieu of its recipes. It is a timely and beautiful reminder that we have to connect back to the land in order to recover a sustainable future."--Alice Waters, author of Chez Panisse Vegetables.Main selection of the Book of the Month Club's Good Cook Club. 55,000 copies in print.

    They renamed him Hans, forced him into the Hitler Youth, and for the next five years his life was consumed by Nazi doctrine. But the ever-observant Now they are the basis for this visual memoir which describes the Nazi phenomenon up close from a child's innocent but discerning perspective.

    France. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer, is convicted of a treasonous act of espionage he did not commit. The next twelve years fiercely divided French public opinion. Anti-Semitism was thrown into the foreground. Famous French figures both condemned and defended Dreyfus, whilst anti-Semitic riots erupted in cities across the country.The Dreyfus Affair signalled an assault on the civil state, on the ideals of justice and community for which the Revolution stood one hundred years earlier. Through all its trials, the family never wavered in its allegiance to a nation that often wavered in the fulfilment of its promises.Through the experiences of six generations of the family Burns shows how the Dreyfus Affair went beyond the events that shook turn-of-the-century society, recounting a larger socio-political saga as gripping as it is disconcerting.It is a story that culminates in the darkest moment of European anti-semitism.The Holocaust.Praise for ‘Dreyfus: A Family Affair 1789-1945’“A remarkable piece of work, both for its detailed scholarship and for its particular overview of French society: a monumental achievement” Claire Tomalin, Independent on Sunday“Mr Burns does not have a thesis to advance, and does not try to draw our conclusions for us. He is content simply to tell a story (and what a story!), which he does with skill, humanity and warmth” John Gross, Sunday Telegraph“A harrowing saga of unrequited patriotism” Observer“Burns handles the central drama with the artistry of a novelist” EuropeanMichael Burns is an American professor emeritus of history of Mount Holyoke College, Ma. and former actor of television and film. During his twenty years teaching European history he authored a number of books focusing on France and the Dreyfus affair.Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at www.endeavourpress.com. Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Follow us on Twitter: @EndeavourPress and on Facebook via http://on.fb.me/1HweQV7. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.

    Their brutal punishment has been hushed up for more than two years when Mathilde Donnay, unable to walk since childhood, begins a relentless quest to find out whether her fiancé, officially "killed in the line of duty," might still be alive. Tipped off by a letter from a dying soldier, the shrewd, sardonic, and wonderfully imaginative Mathilde scours the country for information about the men. As she carries her search to its end, an elaborate web of deception and coincidence emerges, and Mathilde comes to an understanding of the horrors, and the acts of kindness, brought about by war.A runaway bestseller in France and the winner of the 1991 Prix Interallié, this astonishing novel is many things at once: an absorbing mystery, a playful study of the different ways one story can be told, a moving and incisive portrait of life in France during and after the First World War, and a love story of transforming power and beauty.

    This is a fine, and unusual, collection of literary Americana."--Atlantic"Fine comic moments of truth."--New York Times Book Review"An invaluable source of literary history."--Publishers Weekly This is the story of one of the most famous literary "sets" of the twentieth century. Gerald and Sara Murphy were at the center of a group including Ernest Hemingway and his wives, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Archibald MacLeish, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Phillip Barry, and many others.  They personified the jazz age and the lost generation. The Murphys have been viewed primarily as cult/pop figures. In this book Miller shows, through a sequential interweaving of letters from several correspondents, that they actually were the nucleus without which the group as we know it would not have stayed together. Miller allows the individual correspondents to tell their own stories, providing  new insights into their lives and this era.  It is the best sort of eavesdropping. Gerald and Sara Murphy married on December 30, 1915.  Both families were moneyed and cosmopolitan.  Their attraction to each other was in part based on their desire to escape the routine and predictable social rounds in which their families were immersed.  Against their families' wishes, they and their three children left for Europe in 1921.  They remained in France for over a decade, and quite naturally socialized with the expatriate set.  They were, in part, models for Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender Is the Night. MacLeish wrote poems about them, their friends paid tribute to them and relied on them day to day and in correspondence, and their own letters are worth reading for their liveliness and because they so well preserve a record of the twenties and thirties.Miller provides nearly every extant letter between the Murphys and their friends during those decades.  Most of them have not been published previously, and of course, they have never been presented collectively.  Together, they constitute an epistolary "novel" of peculiar power and authenticity about a remarkable era.

    He takes the reader into a fictional world where a variety of characters collide: three prisoners just released from jail, a band of circus performers, a string quartet, a writer, and a bird. All are trying to survive in an absurd and hostile environment of authoritarian spectacle, at the mercy of a tyrannical buffoon, and seeking the strange counterbalance of hope in a viola player, whose stunning music just might save them all, if only for a moment.

    Whether he is expressing consternation at Avignon's immense Palace of the Popes, monument to medieval extravagance, or tracking the legend of bike racer Jacques Anquetil, Daley has a knack for the telling detail, the unusual observation. A few of these 19 vignettes delve into little-known events, like the building of French concentration camps in the Pyrenees during WW II. Among the indelible portraits we find those of French soldier- politican-aristocrat Lafayette, Grace Kelly, Scottish novelist Tobias Smollett (inventor of the ``fabulous Riviera'' mystique) and De Gaulle, an obscure brigadier general in 1940 worried mainly about his wife and retarded daughter. Other pieces deal with Lourdes, Bordeaux, a perfume factory in Grasse, Jules Massenet writing operas in Paris and the Sansons family, which operated the guillotine through six generations.

    They fell in love with it. This title tells of their love affair with the house; from the ups and downs of buying and renovating it, to the challenge of becoming part of the local French community.

    Following the success of "My Father's Glory" and "My Mother's Castle", this book is an evocation of the author's school-days in Provence.

    Historian Douglas Porch chronicles the Legion’s involvement in Spain, Mexico, Indochina, Madagascar, WWI, Vietnam, and Algiers (to name a few) and delves into the inner workings of legionnaires and their captains. Known for draconian discipline and shrouded in mystery, the secrets of the Legion are guarded by those who have gained admittance into its elite society. In this thoroughly researched and impressive account, Porch reveals the mysteries surrounding a Legion of “unparalleled exoticism, pathos, and drama.”

    In combining certain of the restrictions of poetic form with the freedom of prose, he sought a form of language capable of conveying the complexity, cacophony, and unexpected juxtapositions of city life. Like his verse, the prose poems are rich in psychological insights and reveal the ability both to select precisely those tiny details that raise the banal to the ironic and to create verbal patterns and rhythms that subtly underpin or throw into question the surface meaning of the language. This collection of all Baudelaire's prose poetry also includes the novella La Fanfarlo, a gently mocking study of love and passion that brilliantly evokes the art of dance.

    “An astutely argued and elegantly written (and translated) book on the philosophical genealogy and logical implications of the work of Jacques Lacan.”—Choice

    The sewers themselves were an important cultural phenomenon, and the men who worked in them a source of fascination. Donald Reid shows that observing how such laborers as cesspool cleaners and sewermen present themselves and are represented by others is a way to reflect on the material and cultural foundations of everyday life.For bourgeois urbanites, the sewer became the repository of latent anxieties about disease, disorder, and anarchy. The sewermen themselves formed a model army of labor in an era of social upheaval in the workplace. They were pioneers both in demanding the right of public servants to unionize and in securing social welfare measures. They were among the first French manual laborers to win the eight-hour day, paid vacations, and other benefits.Reid transcends traditional categories by bringing together the infrastructure and the cultural supports of society, viewing technocracy and its achievements in technical, political and cultural terms. Historians of modern France, and Francophiles in search of the unusual, will welcome the cultural interfaces of urban history, labor history, and the history of technology his book provides. His text is enlivened by drawings and photographs of the life below Paris streets, and illuminated by references to literary sources such as Hugo's Les Miserables and Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot.

    

    Here are stories written by the famous and by those whose names are less well known; recluses and extroverts; the rich and the impoverished; novelists and poets; heterosexuals, bisexuals, and lesbians. Many were American and English expatriates caught up in the artistic revolt of Paris between 1890 and 1940; others, who ventured forth in imagination only, drew on its innovative spirit. Many refuted traditional concepts of gender and sexuality; all challenged restrictive definitions of femininity. Colette, H. D., Susan Glaspell, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, Katherine Mansfield, Anais Nin, Dorothy Richardson, Jean Rhys, and May Sinclair number among this period's host of accomplished women writers. A woman becomes obsessed by a life-size doll and rescues the memory of its original model from neglect; another keeps an array of Parisian gowns under lock and key rather than join the masquerade of fashion; two housewives use their attention to domestic detail to detect--and shield--a murderer. Here are writers who cast aside conventions. Rebellious, talented, provocative, they parade their tales of those who take life on their own terms--you know, that kind of woman.

    They were given the chance to acquire a lifestyle as well--that of the bourgeoisie. Wearing proper clothing encouraged proper behavior, went the prevailing belief.Available now for the first time in English, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie was one of the first extensive studies to explain a culture's sociology through the seemingly simple issue of the choice of clothing. Philippe Perrot shows, through a delightful tour of the rise of the ready-made fashion industry in France, how clothing can not only reflect but also inculcate beliefs, values, and aspirations. By the middle of the century, men were prompted to disdain the decadent and gaudy colors of the pre-Revolutionary period and wear unrelievedly black frock coats suitable to the manly and serious world of commerce. Their wives and daughters, on the other hand, adorned themselves in bright colors and often uncomfortable and impractical laces and petticoats, to signal the status of their family. The consumer pastime of shopping was born, as women spent their spare hours keeping up their middle-class appearance, or creating one by judicious purchases.As Paris became the fashion capital and bourgeois modes of dress and their inherent attitudes became the ruling lifestyle of Western Europe and America, clothing and its civilizing tendencies were imported to non-Western colonies as well. In the face of what Perrot calls this leveling process, the upper classes tried to maintain their stature and right to elegance by supporting what became the high fashion industry. Richly detailed, entertaining, and provocative, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie reveals to us the sources of many of our contemporary rules of fashion and etiquette.

    His influence on modern French poetry was profound, and his modernist lyrical verse is still widely read. Much of his other work is equally exciting and original, but has waited decades for capable translators. Hesitant Fire makes available for the first time in English some of his best prose. The translators, Moishe Black and Maria Green, have succeeded in catching his gift for linguistic innovation, for mimicry and buffoonery often a millimeter away from melancholy.This anthology displays Jacob’s versatility, for he wrote in a dozen styles. The Story of King Kabul the First and Gawain the Kitchen-Boy is a fable populated by Balibridgians and Bouloulabassians. Excerpts from In Defense of Tartufe reveal the poet’s mysticism and aestheticism. Those from The Flowering Plant offer brilliant social analysis behind a mask of the Absurd. Flim-Flam studies such characters as “The Lawyer Who Meant to Have Two Wives Instead of One” and “The Unmarried Teacher at the High School in Cherbourg.” The Dullard Prince blends autobiography and fiction. Letters to Mrs. Goldencalf and other imaginary members of the bourgeoisie are taken from The Dark Room. Never before published, “The Maid” was inspired by a contemporary murder case. Also included here are portions of The Bouchaballe Property, Jacob’s favorite of his own novels; entries from A Traveler’s Notebook; personal letters; and four religious meditations. For many English-language readers, Hesitant Fire will be in introduction to a writer who was an immediate precursor of Surrealism, who was a close friend of Picasso and Apollinaire, who converted to Catholicism but retained an intensely Jewish outlook, and who produced work that is still vivid nearly a half-century after his death.

    A lifetime of wisdom infuses the collection of stories gathered by centenarian Jos Miguel de Barandiran, patriarch and interpreter of ancient Basque tales, a sample of which are available for the first time in English in A view from the Witch's Cave.

    Renowned authors and storytellers Judy Sierra and Robert Kaminski have collected 25 folktales representing the peoples and cultures of North America (including Hispanic and African American stories), Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The authors share their years of storytelling experience and techniques and recommend other helpful publications for additional information and suggestions. These distinguished and popular authors have also included full-sized traceable figures for you to use in creating flannel board characters and puppets!Introduction --pt. 1. Storytelling techniques and materials: Storytelling --Telling stories with the flannel board --Telling stories with puppets. --pt. 2. Folktales for children two-and-a-half to five: The three little kittens (United States) --Anna Mariah (Anglo-American) --The elegant rooster (El gallo elegante, Spain) --The three bears (England) --The cat and the mouse (England) --The goat in the chile patch (El cabrito en la hortaliza de los chiles, United States-Hispanic) --Anansi and the rock (West Africa) --La Hormiguita (Mexico) --Teeny-tiny (England) --The hungry cat (Norway) --See for yourself (Tibet) --The great tug-o-war (African American) --The knee-high man (African American) --In a dark, dark wood (Anglo-American) --pt. 3. Folktales for children five to seven: The lion and the mouse (Greece) --The travels of a fox (England) --Roly-poly rice ball (Japan) --The wonderful pot (Denmark) --Buchettino (Italy) --Don't let the tiger get you! (Korea) --The stonecutter (China) --Drakes-tail (France) --Lazy Jack (England) --Why do monkeys live in trees? (West Africa) --Stone soup (Belgium) --pt. 4. Resources for storytelling

    Barzun’s many-faceted and entertaining study muses on six hundred years of French verse, its rules and forms and how they evolved. It also has significant sections on the French language itself, its sounds and difficulties; on verse music in language generally; on the character and achievements of the greatest French poets; and finally, on the social and political conditions that encouraged successive innovations, including the prevailing wordwide practice of free verse. The Essay, moreover, draws not only on a lifetime’s reading, but on personal reminiscences as well: of stuffy poetry lessons in the French lycée; of the poet Apollinaire expounding his views on language to amuse the child sitting on his knee; of the author’s great-grandmother telling him about proper French pronunciation, as it was in her youth, eighty years earlier. In sum, Barzun’s book goes a long way toward answering the question posed in 1917 by A. E. Housman to André Gide: How is it that every nation has produced poetry except France?

    The evidence in this edition supports Haywood's earlier arguments, and advances the view that Viking ships and sea borne activities were not as revolutionary as is commonly believed.

    (Dumas pere turned this actual historical incident into the famous novel.) Here, both Louis and the mysterious prisoner are dead when Ralph Croft, master forger, is plucked from the Bastille and enlisted by the French regent to determine the masked man's identity. Working with murderous musketeer D'Estrivet and royal archivist Maurepas, he uncovers a web of intrigue that involves plots against the crown, the Knights Templar and a fallen finance minister. There are even occasional winking references to those other famous Dumas characters, the Three Musketeers. Doherty's exposition of the historical record is often clumsy, and he cannot resist letting Croft somewhat anachronistically ponder the fate of the ancien regime. Still, it's all good fun--even if the author's tongue is planted firmly in his cheek.

    A courtesan, she became Louis XV's official mistress and was fêted as one of France's most beautiful women. On Louis XV's death she became vulnerable to those secretly longing for her downfall. Marie Antoinette had her imprisoned for a year, and in 1793 she was executed by the Revolutionary Tribunal for her aristocratic associations. Joan Haslip's classic biography shares the extraordinary and ultimately tragic story of du Barry's life and, in turn, illustrates the dazzling world of the eighteenth century royal court of France and the horrors of the Revolution.

    Nowhere is this more revealingly illustrated than in urban design, a field that encompasses architecture and social life, traditions and modernization. Here aesthetic goals and political intentions meet, sometimes in collaboration, sometimes in conflict. Here the formal qualities of art confront the complexities of history. When urban design policies are implemented, they reveal underlying aesthetic, cultural, and political dilemmas with startling clarity. Gwendolyn Wright focuses on three French colonies—Indochina, Morocco, and Madagascar—that were the most discussed, most often photographed, and most admired showpieces of the French empire in the early twentieth century. She explores how urban policy and design fit into the French colonial policy of "association," a strategy that accepted, even encouraged, cultural differences while it promoted modern urban improvements that would foster economic development for Western investors. Wright shows how these colonial cities evolved, tracing the distinctive nature of each locale under French imperialism. She also relates these cities to the larger category of French architecture and urbanism, showing how consistently the French tried to resolve certain stylistic and policy problems they faced at home and abroad. With the advice of architects and sociologists, art historians and geographers, colonial administrators sought to exert greater control over such matters as family life and working conditions, industrial growth and cultural memory. The issues Wright confronts—the potent implications of traditional norms, cultural continuity, modernization, and radical urban experiments—still challenge us today.

    

    450 full-color and 24 black-and-white photographs.

    Both English-speaking students of French and French-speaking students of English will find this dictionary invaluable in improving their conversational skill and an excellent word finder when they are reading popular newspapers or magazines in their second language. Updated to keep pace with the most current idioms, this two-part phrase book translates 2001 expressions from French to English, and from English to French. All entries are illustrated with sample sentences. This reference volume features two handy quick-word-finder indexes--one at the end of each of French section, and one at the end of the English section.

    While traveling to her father's chateau, she'd flirted shamelessly with handsome Jean-Marc Beaunoir, never dreaming the rogue was on his way to the very same destination....What had begun as a playful seduction had turned into something far more serious than Jean-Marc had intended. The young architect marveled as Amalie blossomed with each forbidden caress, but the past had taught him that love could not bridge the barriers of class. Had destiny made them prisoners of a love that could never be?

    The first visitors were enchanted by the freedoms that they were granted but after the rise of Pan-Africanism and the New Negro Movement, besides two world wars and the Algerian war, France was gradually reduced in their estimation merely to a gateway to Africa, and especially so once the black power movement took hold in the United States.

    Here Sandra Zimdars-Swartz provides a detective-like investigation of the experiences and interpretations of six major apparitions, including those at La Salette and Lourdes in France during the mid-nineteenth century; at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917; and the more recent ones at San Damiano, Italy; Garabandal, Spain; and Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, where the apparitions continue. Adopting a phenomenological approach to these encounters with Mary--one that is neither apologetic nor antagonistic--the author explores the tension between the personal meaning of the events for their subjects and the public appropriation of this meaning by a larger religious community. Along the way she examines the backgrounds of the seers, their willingness or reluctance to talk about the apparitions and their messages, the amount of emotional support they received from family and community as news of the apparitions spread, the reports of miracles at apparition sites, the reactions of local authorities, and the steps taken by the Roman Catholic Church in officially recognizing or rejecting the apparitions as worthy of belief. The author concludes with a survey of religious worldviews based on Marian apparitions, focusing especially on the now-popular transcultural apocalyptic nature of these messages to the modern world.Originally published in 1991.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

    However, as reviews of the first volume in this translation agreed, whatever The Family Idiot may be called—"a dialectic" (Fredric Jameson, New York Times Book Review); "biography, philosophy, or politics? Surely . . . all of these together" (Renee Winegarten, Commentary); "a new form of fiction?" (Victor Brombert, Times Literary Supplement); or simply, "mad, of course" (Julian Barnes, London Review of Books)—its prominent place in intellectual history is indisputable.Volume 4 consists of part three, books one and two, of the original French work. This volume, the fourth in a projected five-volume English-language edition, includes Sartre's discussion of the onset of Flaubert's illness, or neurosis, in 1844, and a significant reading of his L'Education sentimentale.Sartre's approach to his complex subject, whether jaunty or judicious, psychoanalytic or political, is captured in all of its rich variety in Carol Cosman's translation.

    With over 200 classical, country cooking recipes, coupled with fascinating information and anecdotes, every page of this book will delight and inspire.