Best of
France

2003

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen


Jacques Pépin - 2003
    Soon Jacques is caught up in the hurly-burly action of his mother's café, where he proves a natural. He endures a literal trial by fire and works his way up the ladder in the feudal system of France's most famous restaurant, finally becoming Charles de Gaulle's personal chef, watching the world being refashioned from the other side of the kitchen door.When he comes to America, Jacques immediately falls in with a small group of as-yet-unknown food lovers, including Craig Claiborne, James Beard, and Julia Child, whose adventures redefine American food. Through it all, Jacques proves himself to be a master of the American art of reinvention: earning a graduate degree from Columbia University, turning down a job as John F. Kennedy's chef to work at Howard Johnson's, and, after a near-fatal car accident, switching careers once again to become a charismatic leader in the revolution that changed the way Americans approached food. Included as well are approximately forty all-time favorite recipes created during the course of a career spanning nearly half a century, from his mother's utterly simple cheese soufflé to his wife's pork ribs and red beans.The Apprentice is the poignant and sometimes funny tale of a boy's coming of age. Beyond that, it is the story of America's culinary awakening and the transformation of food from an afterthought to a national preoccupation.

Exquisite Pain


Sophie Calle - 2003
    Over the last two decades, Sophie Calle has made it her business to follow, peek into and illuminate the lives of people she barely knows, with results that both illustrate human vulnerability and tend not infrequently to pathos.

The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871


Geoffrey Wawro - 2003
    Alarmed by Bismarck's territorial ambitions and the Prussian army's crushing defeats of Denmark in 1864 and Austria in 1866, French Emperor Napoleon III vowed to bring Prussia to heel. Digging into many European and American archives for the first time, Geoffrey Wawro's Franco-Prussian War describes the war that followed in thrilling detail. While the armies mobilized in July 1870, the conflict appeared "too close to call." Prussia and its German allies had twice as many troops as the French. But Marshal Achille Bazaine's grognards ("old grumblers") were the stuff of legend, the most resourceful, battle-hardened, sharp-shooting troops in Europe, and they carried the best rifle in the world. From the political intrigues that began and ended the war to the bloody battles at Gravelotte and Sedan and the last murderous fights on the Loire and in Paris, this is the definitive history of the Franco-Prussian War.

The Magical Garden of Claude Monet


Laurence Anholt - 2003
    Julie is pleased when her mother decides to take her to visit the most wonderful garden in the world, owned by a great friend of the family. They arrive at their destination, and for this little girl it is like walking in a dreamy world where twisting plants grow as tall as trees. When Julie's dog runs away, she asks the gardener to help find her pet, and soon she and the gardener are friends. But this amiable, bearded old man is a very unusual gardener, for not only does he cultivate his many plants, he also paints beautiful pictures of them. Julie has made a friend of the great impressionist painter, Claude Monet. Based on a true story about the daughter of another fine artist, Berthe Morisot, this charmingly illustrated picture book includes reproductions by author-illustrator Laurance Anholt of a famous waterlilies painting, which Monet completed in his garden at Giverny, a few miles from Paris.

Vive la Revolution: A Stand-up History of the French Revolution


Mark Steel - 2003
    Brilliantly funny and insightful, it puts individual people back at the center of the story of the French Revolution, telling this remarkable story as it has never been told before.For the Haymarket edition, Steel has added a new preface for North American readers and revised the book to address parallel themes in US history.

Rick Steves' Provence & the French Riviera


Rick Steves - 2003
    Experience Roman history with self-guided tours of the Pont du Gard aqueduct, Roman theater in Orange, and Arena in Arles. Explore sun-soaked Riviera beaches and resort towns, from cosmopolitan Nice to colorful Villefranche-sur-Mer. Get inspired by artistic masterpieces by Renoir, Matisse, Picasso, and Chagall. After a day of sightseeing, relax at a café with a view, dive into a bowl of bouillabaisse, and watch fishermen return to the harbor.Rick's candid, humorous advice will guide you to good-value hotels and restaurants. You'll learn which sights are worth your time and money, and how to get around by train, bus, car, or boat. More than just reviews and directions, a Rick Steves guidebook is a tour guide in your pocket.

The Rose of Martinique: A Life of Napoleon's Josephine


Andrea Stuart - 2003
    She embodied all the characteristics of a true Creole-sensuality, vivacity, and willfulness. Using diaries and letters, Andrea Stuart expertly re-creates Josephine's whirlwind of a life, which began with an isolated Caribbean childhood and led to a marriage that would usher her onto the world stage and crown her empress of France.Josephine managed to be in the forefront of every important episode of her era's turbulent history: from the rise of the West Indian slave plantations that bankrolled Europe's rapid economic development, to the decaying of the ancien régime, to the French Revolution itself, from which she barely escaped the guillotine.Rescued from near starvation, she grew to epitomize the wild decadence of post-revolutionary Paris. It was there that Josephine first caught the eye of Napoleon Bonaparte. A true partner to Napoleon, she was equal parts political adviser, hostess par excellence, confidante, and passionate lover. In this captivating biography, Stuart brings her so utterly to life that we finally understand why Napoleon's last word before dying was the name he had given her: Josephine.

Paris, Capital of Modernity


David Harvey - 2003
    The book is heavily illustrated and includes a number drawings, portraits and cartoons by Daumier, one of the greatest political caricaturists of the nineteenth century.

Matisse and Picasso: The Story of Their Rivalry and Friendship


Jack D. Flam - 2003
    They have become cultural icons, standing not only for different kinds of art but also for different ways of living. Matisse, known for his restraint and intense sense of privacy, for his decorum and discretion, created an art that transcended daily life and conveyed a sensuality that inhabited an abstract and ethereal realm of being. In contrast, Picasso became the exemplar of intense emotionality, of theatricality, of art as a kind of autobiographical confession that was often charged with violence and explosive eroticism. In Matisse and Picasso , Jack Flam explores the compelling, competitive, parallel lives of these two artists and their very different attitudes toward the idea of artistic greatness, toward the women they loved, and ultimately toward their confrontations with death.

Jean Cocteau: A Life


Claude Arnaud - 2003
    In this landmark biography, Claude Arnaud thoroughly contests this characterization, as he celebrates Cocteau’s “fragile genius—a combination almost unlivable in art” but in his case so fertile. Arnaud narrates the life of this legendary French novelist, poet, playwright, director, filmmaker, and designer who, as a young man, pretended to be a sort of a god, but who died as a humble and exhausted craftsman. His moving and compassionate account examines the nature of Cocteau’s chameleon-like genius, his romantic attachments, his controversial politics, and his intimate involvement with many of the century’s leading artistic lights, including Picasso, Proust, Hemingway, Stravinsky, and Tennessee Williams. Already published to great critical acclaim in France, Arnaud’s penetrating and deeply researched work reveals a uniquely gifted artist while offering a magnificent cultural history of the twentieth century.

Gone with the Wine: Living the Dream in France's Loire Valley


Rosanne Knorr - 2003
    Along with her husband and pate-loving dog, Folly, they gain insights on the history, people, and daily life. Joyful reading for voyagers and armchair travelers alike!

Strapless: John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X


Deborah Davis - 2003
    A relative unknown at the time, Sargent won the commission to paint her; the two must have recognized in each other a like-minded hunger for fame.Unveiled at the 1884 Paris Salon, Gautreau's portrait generated the attention she craved-but it led to infamy rather than stardom. Sargent had painted one strap of Gautreau's dress dangling from her shoulder, suggesting either the prelude to or the aftermath of sex. Her reputation irreparably damaged, Gautreau retired from public life, destroying all the mirrors in her home.Drawing on documents from private collections and other previously unexamined materials, and featuring a cast of characters including Oscar Wilde and Richard Wagner, Strapless is a tale of art and celebrity, obsession and betrayal.

André Breton: Selections


André Breton - 2003
    The inaugural volume in the Poets for the Millennium series, André Breton offers the most comprehensive selection available in English of Breton's poetry, along with a selection of his major prose writings. The translations, a number of which are published here for the first time, are by some of the most notable poets in our language, including David Antin, Paul Auster, Samuel Beckett, Michael Benedikt, Robert Duncan, David Gascoyne, and Charles Simic. This volume also includes an extensive biographical and thematic introduction by Mark Polizzotti, which sets the poems in the context of Breton's life and overall career.

Report from a Parisian Paradise: Essays from France, 1925-1939


Joseph Roth - 2003
    His essays from Report from a Parisian Paradise evoke a world of suppleness, beauty and promise. So prophetic were Roth's perceptions of a world where the girls became increasingly more lost and innocent that he increasingly resorted to drink to douse his vision of a conflagration that could not be averted. the erotic hill country around Avignon Roth's, and from the socialist workers and cattlemen with whom Roth ate breakfast to prostitutes and Sunday bullfighters, Roth's book is a swan song to a European order that could no longer hold.

Joie de Vivre: Simple French Style for Everyday Living


Robert Arbor - 2003
    Explains how to achieve simple and pleasurable living through French cooking, including recipes, vegetable gardening techniques, and strategies for unique dinners and parties.

Eugene Atget: Unknown Paris


David Harris - 2003
    With the exception of his earliest photographs, he chose not to represent a particular site by a single, definitive photograph but produced sequences of interrelated images that create a cumulative portrait.A collection of case studies of archetypal urban settings, this book examines Atget’s approach to photography. It features 240 of his photographs—nearly all of which have never been published—assembled to display the integral relationship between the photographer’s working method and his subject matter, revealing the character of Le Vieux Paris itself.A natural companion to the New Press’s Berenice Abbott: Changing New York, Eugène Atget is the product of an exhibit mounted in response to Abbott’s work and reflective of the two photographers’ shared vision.

The American Boulangerie: Authentic Breads and Pastries for the Home Kitchen


Pascal Rigo - 2003
    Recipes from the master baker presented in colorfully illustrated large format includes seventy recipes for a wide variety of pastries and covering the range of French regions and styles.

Matisse and Picasso: The Story of Their Rivalry and Friendship


Jack Flam - 2003
    They have become cultural icons, standing not only for different kinds of art but also for different ways of living. Matisse, known for his restraint and intense sense of privacy, for his decorum and discretion, created an art that transcended daily life and conveyed a sensuality that inhabited an abstract and ethereal realm of being. In contrast, Picasso became the exemplar of intense emotionality, of theatricality, of art as a kind of autobiographical confession that was often charged with violence and explosive eroticism. In Matisse and Picasso, Jack Flam explores the compelling, competitive, parallel lives of these two artists and their very different attitudes toward the idea of artistic greatness, toward the women they loved, and ultimately toward their confrontations with death.

Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris


Ginette Vincendeau - 2003
    Ginette Vincendeau discusses the artistic value of his films in their proper context and comments on Jean-Pierre Melville's love of American culture and his controversial critical and political standing in this English language study.

General and Madame de Lafayette: Partners in Liberty's Cause in the American and French Revolutions


Jason Lane - 2003
    The Marquise (1759-1807), born Adrienne de Noailles, shared the same controversial beliefs as her husband, supporting and defending him wholeheartedly despite ongoing political persecution-including the Marquis's exile in an Austrian dungeon and her own imprisonment (and near-execution) by French radicals. Employing a sweeping, classical feel, and visiting landscapes including the magnificent court at Versailles, the brutal hardship of Valley Forge, and the momentous storming of the Bastille, Lane chronicles and celebrates the couple's passionate yet tumultuous relationship while documenting the birth of America, two French Revolutions, and the Napoleonic era.

Images: The Piano Music of Claude Debussy


Paul Roberts - 2003
    Paris at the turn of the 20th century was obsessed with the interrelations of the arts. It was a time when artists and writers spoke of poetry as music, sounds as colors, and paintings as symphonies. The music of Claude Debussy, with its unique textures and dazzling colors, was the perfect counterpart to the bold new styles of painting in France. Paul Roberts probes the sources of Debussy's artistic inspiration, relating the "impressionist" titles to the artistic and literary ferment of the time. He also draws on his own performing experience to touch on all the principal technical problems for a performer of Debussy's piano music. His many suggestions about interpreting the music will be particularly valuable to performers as well as listeners.

Edouard Vuillard


Guy Cogeval - 2003
    This book is the catalogue for an exhibition on view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., from January 19 to April 20, 2003. 300 illustrations, 220 in color.

The Rough Guide to Paris


Ruth Blackmore - 2003
    There are incisive accounts of all the sights, from the world renowned Louvre and Tour Eiffel to the well-kept secrets of Balzac's house and the Jardin du Paris. There are also reviews of cafes, bars, restaurants and hotels, and listings of shops and markets, clubs and cinemas - presenting the reader with the best Paris has to offer, for every budget. A further chapter includes in-depth coverage of day-trips from the city, including Versailles and Disneyland Paris.

Marie Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen


Dena Goodman - 2003
    This volume explores the many struggles by various individuals and groups to put right Marie's identity, and it simultaneously links these struggles to larger destabilizations in social, political and gender systems in France.Looking at how Marie was represented in politics, art, literature and journalism, the contributors to this volume reveal how crucial political and cultural contexts were enacted "on the body of the queen" and on the complex identity of Marie. Taken together, these essays suggest that it is precisely because she came to represent the contradictions in the social, political and gender systems of her era, that Marie remains such an important historical figure.

The Orphans of Normandy: A True Story of World War II Told Through Drawings by Children


Nancy Amis - 2003
    They began a trek on foot to a safer location, to Beaufort-en-Vallee, a town one hundred and fifty miles away. As the war raged on all sides of them, the girls, led by their teachers, bravely marched south, keeping one step ahead of the fighting and waving little white flags for protection. Told through their own drawings and words, this moving and timely book details their experiences on their journey to safety.

Treasury of World Culture: Archaeological Sites and Urban Centers UNESCO World Heritage


Valerio Terraroli - 2003
    This large volume is part of a collaborative project between UNESCO and Skira Editore to publish information on these sites and begins with a selection of 46 archaeological sites or areas from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Descriptions and historical information are placed alongside stunning colour photographs of areas such as the Vatican City, Stonehenge, Angkor, Cracow, Petra, Damascus, Thebes, Copan, Machu Picchu and Nasca. A list of all the archaeological sites and urban areas protected by UNESCO are listed at the back. The next two volumes will focus on individual monumental complexes and environmental areas under threat.

Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema


Alison McMahan - 2003
    From 1896 to 1920 she directed 400 films (including over 100 synchronized sound films), produced hundreds more, and was the first--and so far the only--woman to own and run her own studio plant (The Solax Studio in Fort Lee, NJ, 1910-1914). However, her role in film history was completely forgotten until her own memoirs were published in 1976. This new book tells her life story and fills in many gaps left by the memoirs. Guy BlachT's life and career mirrored momentous changes in the film industry, and the long time-span and sheer volume of her output makes her films a fertile territory for the application of new theories of cinema history, the development of film narrative, and feminist film theory. The book provides a close analysis of the one hundred Guy BlachT films that survive, and in the process rewrites early cinema history.

One Thousand Buildings of Paris


Kathy Borrus - 2003
    It is the city of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, of the Louvre and Monmartre. But, within its 20 concentric arrondissements are many surprises too, from glass office towers to jewel-box mansions to massive public buildings. The monuments, private houses, museums, hotels, and myriad other structures that make up the widely various neighborhoods of Paris have been captured here as never before, by photographers Jorg Brockmann and James Driscoll. Each of the 1,000 photographs is accompanied by detailed and informative text recounting the history, significance, and the current state of each building. There are also neighborhood maps and fascinating sidebars and appendices, all adding up to an unprecedented view of a uniquely beautiful city that has captivated the imagination of world travelers for centuries.

Napoleon: A Political Life


Steven Englund - 2003
    Russell Major Prize, American Historical AssociationBest Book on the First Empire by a Foreigner, Napoleon Foundation"Englund has written a most distinguished book recounting Bonaparte's life with clarity and ease...This magnificent book tells us much that we did not know and gives us a great deal to think about."--Douglas Johnson, Los Angeles Times Book Review"Englund, in his lively biography...seeks less to rehabilitate Napoleon's reputation and legacy than to provide readers with a fuller view of the man and his actions."--Paula Friedman, New York Times"Napoleon: A Political Life is a veritable tour de force the general reader will enjoy it immensely, and learn a great deal from it. But the book also has much to offer historians of modern France."--Sudhir Hazareesingh, Times Literary Supplement"Englund's incisive forays into political theory don't diminish the force of his narrative, which impressively conveys the epochal changes confronting both France and Europe...A strikingly argued biography."--Matthew Price, Washington PostThis sophisticated and masterful biography brings new and remarkable analysis to the study of modern history's most famous general and statesman. As Englund charts Napoleon's dramatic rise and fall--from his Corsican boyhood, his French education, his astonishing military victories and no less astonishing acts of reform as First Consul (1799-1804) to his controversial record as Emperor and, finally, to his exile and death--he explores the unprecedented power Napoleon maintains over the popular imagination.

Chantemesle: A Normandy Childhood


Robin Fedden - 2003
    In this minutely observed landscape, where even the wind is a character in its own right, we meet blind Battouflet, the singing hermit of the hillside, solemn Clotilde, the author's first girlfriend who lives in a chateau in the heart of the forest, and a desiccated and disturbing spinster, Mlle. Firman. Fedden writes with preternatural clarity, taking the reader with him into a long-forgotten yet echoingly familiar world. When Fedden finds himself expelled from this realm by his emerging sexuality, he leaves us reeling with nostalgia for that timeless sense of the present that is the magic of childhood.

Critics of the Enlightenment: Readings in the French Counter-Revolutionary Tradition


Christopher Olaf Blum - 2003
    To understand adequately what Georges Bernanos called the spiritual drama of Europe, it is a tradition that must be grappled with. Critics of the Enlightenment makes available new translations of representative selections from some of the leading French conservative thinkers of the nineteenth century: Franois de Chateaubriand, Louis de Bonald, Joseph de Maistre, Frederic Le Play, Emile Keller, and Rene de La Tour du Pin. The selections span much of the nineteenth century, from Chateaubriand's 1814 pamphlet against Bonaparte to La Tour du Pin's 1883 essay on the theory of the corporate state. The volume, therefore, not only includes responses of the French conservatives to the French Revolutions of 1789 through 1815, but also testifies to the continuing elaboration of this critique against the background of the troubled nineteenth century. Blum's introduction sets these selections within the contexts of the events giving rise to them and the lives of their authors. The French political philosopher Philippe Beneton supplies the book's foreword. Blum's elegant translations of texts heretofore difficult or impossible to find in English allow Anglophone readers to profit from the counter-revolutionaries' insights about social and cultural matters of perennial importance, such as the necessary roles of religion, family, and local communities within any larger political society--matters of pressing concern to the counter-revolutionaries of our own time

Gertrude Stein: The Language That Rises: 1923-1934


Ulla E. Dydo - 2003
    This definitive study give us a finely detailed, deeply felt understanding of Stein, the great modernist, throughout one of her most productive periods. From "An Elucidation" in 1923 to Lectures In America in 1934, Ulla E. Dydo examines the process of the making and remaking of Stein's texts as they move from notepad to notebook to manuscript, from an idea to the ultimate refinement of the author's intentions. The result is an unprecedented view of the development of Stein's work, word by word, text by text, and over time.

Loire Valley Sketchbook


Fabrice Moireau - 2003
    Here, the shimmering limestone chateaux constructed by the powerful Valois monarchs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries rise like mirages above Europe's most sublimely beautiful river. Not merely stone and mortar realizations of daring architectural design, these are palaces of the imagination, the grand triumphs of Renaissance Dreams. They include the hunting chateau of Chambord, and the magnificent Chenonceau, resting on graceful arches across the Cher River--and once home to Diane De Poitiers, Catherine DeMedici, and the mysterious Nostradamus. Capturing this singular mixture of natural and manmade beauty in loving brushstrokes, Fabrice Moireau collaborates with writer Jean-Paul Pigeat to bring this magical and enamoring land into the living rooms of American readers.

The Modern Woman Revisited: Paris Between the Wars


Whitney Chadwick - 2003
    It was during this period that a so-called “modern woman” began occupying urban spaces associated with the development of modern art and modernism’s struggles to define subjectivities and sexualities.  Whereas most studies of modernism’s formal innovations and its encouragement of artistic autonomy neglect or omit necessary discussions of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation, the contributors of The Modern Woman Revisited inject these perspectives into the discussion.  Between the two World Wars, Paris served as the setting for unparalleled freedom for expatriate as well as native-born French women, who enjoyed unprecedented access to education and opportunities to participate in public artistic and intellectual life. Many of these women made lasting contributions in art and literature.  Some of the artists discussed include Colette, Tamara de Lempicka, Sonia Delaunay, Djuna Barnes, Augusta Savage, and Lee Miller.In this book, an internationally recognized roster of art historians, literary critics, and other scholars offers a nuanced portrait of what it meant to be a modern woman during this decisive period of modernism’s development. Individual essays explore the challenges faced by women in the early decades of the twentieth century, as well as the strategies these women deployed to create their art and to build meaningful lives and careers. The introduction underscores the importance of the contributors’ efforts to engender larger questions about modernity, sexuality, race, and class.

The Road from Versailles: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the Fall of the French Monarchy


Munro Price - 2003
    They were compelled for their own safety to approve the Revolution and its agenda. Yet, in deep secrecy, they soon began to develop a very different, and dangerous, strategy. The precautions they took against discovery, and the bloody overthrow of the monarchy three years later, dispersed or obliterated most of the clues to their real policy. Much of this evidence has until now remained unknown.The Road from Versailles reconstructs in detail, for the first time, the king and queen’s clandestine diplomacy from 1789 until their executions. To do so, it focuses on a vital but previously ignored figure, the royal couple’s confidant, the baron de Breteuil. Exiled from France by the Revolution, Breteuil became their secret prime minister, and confidential emissary to the courts of Europe.Along with the queen’s probable lover, the comte de Fersen, it was Breteuil who organized the royal family’s dramatic dash for freedom, the flight to Varennes. Breteuil’s role is crucial to an understanding of what Louis and Marie Antoinette secretly felt and thought during the Revolution. To unlock these secrets, The Road from Versailles draws on highly important unpublished and previously unknown material.Meticulously researched and utterly fascinating, The Road from Versailles provides fresh insight into some of the most controversial events in modern history.

Loire Valley Sketchbook


Jean-Paul Pigeat - 2003
    Here, the shimmering limestone chateaux constructed by the powerful Valois monarchs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries rise like mirages above Europe's most sublimely beautiful river. Not merely stone and mortar realizations of daring architectural design, these are palaces of the imagination, the grand triumphs of Renaissance Dreams. They include the hunting chateau of Chambord, and the magnificent Chenonceau, resting on graceful arches across the Cher River--and once home to Diane De Poitiers, Catherine DeMedici, and the mysterious Nostradamus.Capturing this singular mixture of natural and manmade beauty in loving brushstrokes, Fabrice Moireau collaborates with writer Jean-Paul Pigeat to bring this magical and enamoring land into the living rooms of American readers.

Brittany (Dk Eyewitness Travel Guide)


Jane Ewart - 2003
    They have become renowned for their visual excellence, which includes unparalleled photography, 3-D mapping, and specially commissioned cutaway illustrations. DK "Eyewitness Travel Guides" are the only guides that work equally well for inspiration, as a planning tool, a practical resource while traveling, and a keepsake following any trip. Each guide is packed with the up-to-date, reliable destination information every traveler needs, including extensive hotel and restaurant listings, themed itineraries, lush photography, and numerous maps.

Journal 1918-1919


Mireille Havet - 2003
    

Butterball


Guy de Maupassant - 2003
    It is published here with a selection of stories about prostitutes, making this a unique collection. When Butterball's carriage is halted by Prussian soldiers, they demand her sexual services as ransom. Her fellow passengers--hitherto disdainful of her company--are suddenly more than happy to benefit from her "immoral" trade. But Butterball is a loyal French nationalist, and she refuses to sleep with the enemy. Through the warmth and generosity of his heroine, Maupassant exposes the hypocrisy of the French middle class. French writer Guy de Maupassant is most famous for his short stories, which depict the humdrum fate of the middle and working classes.

Crossing the Channel: British and French Painting in the Age of Romanticism


Patrick Noon - 2003
    Artists from both countries crisscrossed the channel; British artists contributed works to French salons, shared studios with French artists, and established themselves as drawing masters to the French aristocracy. All the major French and British artists of the day, including Corot, Delacroix, and Ingres, are represented in this important new book. About the Author:Patrick Noon has been the Patrick and Aimee Butler Curator of Paintings and Modern Sculpture at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts since 1997. His publications include, most recently, studies of the Romantic painters Richard Parkes Bonington and William Blake.

Provence Style


Taschen - 2003
    Readers can traverse a wordless cross-section of Provencal images, which together paint a vivid mosaic of life in Provence.

Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris


Jeffrey H. Jackson - 2003
    Scott Fitzgerald, but also a dynamic musical style emerging in the United States: jazz. Roaring through cabarets, music halls, and dance clubs, the upbeat, syncopated rhythms of jazz soon added to the allure of Paris as a center of international nightlife and cutting-edge modern culture. In Making Jazz French, Jeffrey H. Jackson examines not only how and why jazz became so widely performed in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s but also why it was so controversial.Drawing on memoirs, press accounts, and cultural criticism, Jackson uses the history of jazz in Paris to illuminate the challenges confounding French national identity during the interwar years. As he explains, many French people initially regarded jazz as alien because of its associations with America and Africa. Some reveled in its explosive energy and the exoticism of its racial connotations, while others saw it as a dangerous reversal of France’s most cherished notions of "civilization." At the same time, many French musicians, though not threatened by jazz as a musical style, feared their jobs would vanish with the arrival of American performers. By the 1930s, however, a core group of French fans, critics, and musicians had incorporated jazz into the French entertainment tradition. Today it is an integral part of Parisian musical performance. In showing how jazz became French, Jackson reveals some of the ways a musical form created in the United States became an international phenomenon and acquired new meanings unique to the places where it was heard and performed.

Paris With Kids 2nd Edition (Open Road Travel Guides)


Valerie Gwinner - 2003
    The author presents a wealth of advice on how to plan a family visit to Paris, and how to have a blast while you're there. It shows how to enliven the tourist experience of Paris for youngsters: sending them searching for gargoyles, tracing the Secret of the Sorcerer's Stone in the Marais, and of course stopping by EuroDisney and the Eiffel Tower. There are countless anecdotes relating the people, events, and legends that make up the story of Paris. "Paris With Kids" also features kid-tested recommendations for family-friendly hotels and restaurants, both in Paris and on day-trips outside the city. We include where to shop with kids for food, clothing, toys, English-language books, and other souvenirs; we offer our favorite playgrounds, green spaces, and amusement parks, suggestions for sports activities, and where to see magic shows, ride in a hot-air balloon, find kids' gourmet cooking classes, and how to make museums fun and enjoyable for the little ones.

Louis Pasteur And Pasteurization


Jennifer Fandel - 2003
    Written in graphic-novel format.

Selected Plays of Hélène Cixous


Hélène Cixous - 2003
    This collection brings together for the first time, four translations into English of Helene Cixous' plays. It is a unique and extraordinary resource for scholars, students, and theatre makers. The collection includes: The Perjured City, translated by Bernadette Fort; Black Sail, White Sail, translated by Donald Watson; Portrait of Dora, translated by Ann Liddle; Drums on the Dam, translated by Judith G. Miller and Brian J. Mallet; This exciting new anthology will disseminate her work to a wide and receptive English speaking audience.

The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940


Julian T. Jackson - 2003
    If the German invasion of France had failed, it is arguable that the war might have ended right there. But the French suffered instead a dramatic and humiliating defeat, a loss that ultimately drew the whole world into war.This exciting new book by Julian Jackson, a leading historian of twentieth-century France, charts the breathtakingly rapid events that led to the defeat and surrender of one of the greatest bastions of the Western Allies. Using eyewitness accounts, memoirs, and diaries to bring the story to life, Jackson not only recreates the intense atmosphere of the six weeks in May and June leading up to the establishment of the Vichy regime, but he also unravels the historical evidence to produce a fresh answer to the perennial question--was the fall of France inevitable. Jackson's vivid narrative explores the errors of France's military leaders, her inability to create stronger alliances, the political infighting, the lack of morale, even the decadence of the inter-war years. He debunks the vast superiority of the German army, revealing that the more experienced French troops did well in battle against the Germans. Perhaps more than anything else, the cause of the defeat was the failure of the French to pinpoint where the main thrust of the German army would come, a failure that led them to put their best soldiers up against a feint, while their worst troops faced the heart of the German war machine.An engaging and authoritative narrative, The Fall of France illuminates six weeks that changed the course of twentieth-century history.

Full-Color Sourcebook of French Fashion: 15th to 19th Centuries


Pauquet Freres - 2003
    Members of the nobility and upper classes are well represented here. Portraits of lavishly garbed court ladies and gentlemen — many in fur-trimmed robes — appear next to dapper pages and handsome knights. Bourgeois fashions (including lace-trimmed garments for both sexes) are presented as well, along with the more modest attire of chambermaids, milkmaids, and shepherdesses. Images of such historic figures as King Henri VI, Madame de Pompadour, Madame du Barry, and Marie Antoinette complete a splendid collection.A valuable reference for costume designers and fashion historians, this beautifully reproduced volume will also serve as a grand treat for fashion enthusiasts.

Moved by Love: Inspired Artists and Deviant Women in Eighteenth-Century France


Mary D. Sheriff - 2003
    Yet it was also thought this same passionate enthusiasm, if taken to unreasonable extremes, could lead to sexual deviance, mental illness, and even death. Women and artists were seen as especially susceptible to these negative consequences of creative enthusiasm—and women artists doubly so. Mary D. Sheriff uses these very different visions of artistic enthusiasm to explore the complex interrelationships among creativity, sexuality, the body, and the mind in eighteenth-century France. Drawing on evidence from the visual arts, literature, philosophy, and medicine, she scrutinizes the different forms of deviance ascribed to male and female artists. Sheriff also demonstrates that the perceived connections among sexuality, creativity, and disease also opened artistic opportunities for women—and creative women took full advantage of them.

Chartres: Sacred Geometry, Sacred Space


Gordon Strachan - 2003
    He goes on to consider how the experience of a particular architectural space affects us, and how sacred geometry works.Beautifully illustrated, this is an inspiring and informative book for anyone interested in religious architecture and spirituality.

Husbands, Wives and Lovers: Marriage and Its Discontents in Nineteenth-Century France


Patricia Mainardi - 2003
    In a period when expectations about marriage were changing, the problems of husbands and wives became a major theme in theater, literature, and the visual arts. The author demonstrates that this intense interest was historically grounded in the post-Revolutionary collision between the new concept of the individual's right to happiness and the traditional prerogatives of family and state.

Paris: 550 photos by Maurice Suberive


Maurice Subervie - 2003
    Every perspective is shown, from the boubuinistes on the quays of the Seine, with their rows of treasured books, to the stairs of Montmartre, crowded with street performers. Cafe sipping literati relax and people watch. Paris by night is shows the dazzling lights of the Champs Elysees. This chunky paperback gives a far more extensive coverage of Paris than most color photography books on the city.

Paris Then and Now


Peter Caine - 2003
    Then and Now Paris features over 100 fascinating archival photographs contrasted with specially commissioned, full-color images of the same scene today. Each work is a visual lesson in the historic changes of this amazingly beautiful and wonderful urban landscape.

Marc Chagall and His Times: A Documentary Narrative


Benjamin Harshav - 2003
    It encompasses the 98 years of Chagall’s life (1887-1985) in Russia, France, the US, as well as Germany and Israel, his deep roots in folk culture, his personal relationships and loves, his involvement with the art of the Russian Revolution, with Surrealism, Communism, Zionism, Yiddish literature and the state of Israel. The book exposes the complex relationships between Chagall’s three cultural identities: Jewish-Russian-French. Indeed, it is a biography of the turbulent times of the twentieth century and the transformations of a Jew in it, his meteoric rise from the “ghetto” of the Russian Pale of Settlement to the centers of modern culture.The book reveals Chagall’s endless curiosity, his forays in many directions beyond painting and drawing: public art, theater and ballet, stained glass windows in churches and synagogues, lithographs, etchings, and illustrations of literature and the Bible. We observe the intricate relations between Chagall’s life and consciousness and the impact of his life on the iconography of his art. Thus, the book provides an indispensable key to the understanding of Chagall’s often enigmatic art. Indeed, it is a contribution to the understanding of some of the central problems of Modern art, such as the question of originality, the interaction between the formal discoveries of the avant-garde and cultural or multi-cultural representation, and the relations between an artist’s art and his personal biography.Renowned Israeli-American scholar Benjamin Harshav presents the first comprehensive investigation of Marc Chagall’s life and consciousness after the classic 1961 biography by Chagall’s son-in-law Franz Meyer. Harshav’s narrative includes hundreds of private letters and documents written by Chagall and his contemporaries in Russian, Yiddish, French, English and other languages, translated by Benjamin and Barbara Harshav into English, and placed in their personal and historical context.

Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715-1815


Ronald Schechter - 2003
    Why was there so much thinking about Jews when they were a minority of less than one percent and had little economic and virtually no political power? In this unusually wide-ranging study of representations of Jews in eighteenth-century France—both by Gentiles and Jews themselves—Ronald Schechteroffers fresh perspectives on the Enlightenment and French Revolution, on Jewish history, and on the nature of racism and intolerance. Informed by the latest historical scholarship and by the insights of cultural theory, Obstinate Hebrews is a fascinating tale of cultural appropriation cast in the light of modern society's preoccupation with the "other." Schechter argues that the French paid attention to the Jews because thinking about the Jews helped them reflect on general issues of the day. These included the role of tradition in religion, the perfectibility of human nature, national identity, and the nature of citizenship. In a conclusion comparing and contrasting the "Jewish question" in France with discourses about women, blacks, and Native Americans, Schechter provocatively widens his inquiry, calling for a more historically precise approach to these important questions of difference.

Madness in Medieval French Literature: Identities Found and Lost


Sylvia Huot - 2003
    Drawing on a range of modern psychoanalytic theories and an impressive range of texts from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, Sylvia Huot focuses on the relationship between madness and identity, both personal and collective, and demonstrates the cultural significance of madness in the Middle Ages.