Although she would later singlehandedly create a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, Julia Child was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia's unforgettable story--struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took the Childs across the globe--unfolds with the spirit so key to Julia's success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of America's most endearing personalities.

    In Queen of Fashion, Caroline Weber shows how Marie Antoinette developed her reputation for fashionable excess, and explains through lively, illuminating new research the political controversies that her clothing provoked. Weber surveys Marie Antoinette's "Revolution in Dress," covering each phase of the queen's tumultuous life, beginning with the young girl, struggling to survive Versailles's rigid traditions of royal glamour (twelve-foot-wide hoopskirts, whalebone corsets that crushed her organs). As queen, Marie Antoinette used stunning, often extreme costumes to project an image of power and wage war against her enemies. Gradually, however, she began to lose her hold on the French when she started to adopt "unqueenly" outfits (the provocative chemise) that, surprisingly, would be adopted by the revolutionaries who executed her. Weber's queen is sublime, human, and surprising: a sometimes courageous monarch unwilling to allow others to determine her destiny. The paradox of her tragic story, according to Weber, is that fashion--the vehicle she used to secure her triumphs--was also the means of her undoing. Weber's book is not only a stylish and original addition to Marie Antoinette scholarship, but also a moving, revelatory reinterpretation of one of history's most controversial figures.

    Ad�le makes Simon promise to try not to lose anything. But as they make their way home, distractions cause Simon to leave something behind at every stop. What will they tell their mother?Detailed pen-and-ink drawings - filled with soft watercolors - make a game of this unforgettable tour through the streets and scenes of early-twentieth-century Paris. Illustrated endpapers extend the fun by replicating a 1907 Baedeker map of Paris.Adèle & Simon is a 2006 New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year and a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

    In an era when women were rarely permitted any serious schooling, this twenty-seven-year-old’s nimble conversation and unusual brilliance led Voltaire, then in his late thirties, to wonder, “Why did you only reach me so late?” They fell immediately and passionately in love.Through the prism of their tumultuous fifteen-year relationship we see the crumbling of an ancient social order and the birth of the Enlightenment. Together the two lovers rebuilt a dilapidated and isolated rural chateau at Cirey where they conducted scientific experiments, entertained many of the leading thinkers of the burgeoning scientific revolution, and developed radical ideas about the monarchy, the nature of free will, the subordination of women, and the separation of church and state. But their time together was filled with far more than reading and intellectual conversation. There were frantic gallopings across France, sword fights in front of besieged German fortresses, and a deadly burning of Voltaire’s books by the public executioner at the base of the grand stairwell of the Palais de Justice in Paris. The pair survived court intrigues at Versailles, narrow escapes from agents of the king, a covert mission to the idyllic lakeside retreat of Frederick the Great of Prussia, forays to the royal gambling tables (where Emilie put her mathematical acumen to lucrative use), and intense affairs that bent but did not break their bond.Along with its riveting portrait of Voltaire as a vulnerable romantic, Passionate Minds at last does justice to the supremely unconventional life and remarkable achievements of Emilie du Châtelet—including her work on the science of fire and the nature of light. Long overlooked, her story tells us much about women’s lives at the time of the Enlightenment. Equally important, it demonstrates how this graceful, quick-witted, and attractive woman worked out the concepts that would lead directly to the “squared” part of Einstein’s revolutionary equation: E=mc2.Based on a rich array of personal letters, as well as writings from houseguests, neighbors, scientists, and even police reports, Passionate Minds is both panoramic and intimate in feeling. It is an unforgettable love story and a vivid rendering of the birth of modern ideas.

    This was, without doubt, the most celebrated cohabitation in art history: never, before or since have two such towering artistic talents been penned up in so small a space. They were the Odd Couple of art history. Predictably, the results were explosive. The dâenouement of their life together has entered into folklore. Two months after Gauguin arrived in Arles, Van Gogh suffered a psychological crisis. He spent most of the rest of his life in a mental institution. Gauguin fled from Arles, and they never saw each other again. But in the brief period during which they worked together a stream of masterpieces was created within the studio they shared. Here, for the first time, the full story of their life together is told.

    Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, today astonishing sums are paid for the works of these artists, whose paintings are celebrated for their ability to capture the moment, not only in the fleeting lights of a landscape but in scenes of daily life. Their dazzling pictures are familiar—but how well does the world know the Impressionists as people? The Private Lives of the Impressionists tells their story. It is the first book to offer an intimate and lively biography of the world's most popular group of artists.In a vivid and moving narrative, biographer Sue Roe shows the Impressionists in the studios of Paris, rural lanes of Montmartre and rowdy riverside bars as Paris underwent Baron Haussmann's spectacular transformation. For more than twenty years they lived and worked together as a group, struggling to rebuild their lives after the Franco-Prussian War and supporting one another through shocked public reactions to unfamiliar canvases depicting laundresses, dancers, spring blossoms and boating scenes.This intimate, colorful, superbly researched account takes us into their homes and studios, and describes their unconventional, volatile and precarious lives, as well as the stories behind the paintings.

    Nagel brings the formidable Marie-Thérèse to life, along with the age of revolution and the waning days of the aristocracy, in a page-turning biography that will appeal to fans of Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette and Amanda Foreman's Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire.In December 1795, at midnight on her seventeenth birthday, Marie-Thérèse, the only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, escaped from Paris's notorious Temple Prison. To this day many believe that the real Marie-Thérèse, traumatized following her family's brutal execution during the Reign of Terror, switched identities with an illegitimate half sister who was often mistaken for her twin. Was the real Marie-Thérèse spirited away to a remote castle to live her life as the woman called "the Dark Countess," while an imposter played her role on the political stage of Europe? Now, two hundred years later, using handwriting samples, DNA testing, and an undiscovered cache of Bourbon family letters, Nagel finally solves this mystery. She tells the remarkable story in full and draws a vivid portrait of an astonishing woman who both defined and shaped an era. Marie-Thérèse's deliberate choice of husbands determined the map of nineteenth-century Europe. Even Napoleon was in awe and called her "the only man in the family." Nagel's gripping narrative captures the events of her fascinating life from her very public birth in front of the rowdy crowds and her precocious childhood to her hideous time in prison and her later reincarnation in the public eye as a saint, and, above all, her fierce loyalty to France throughout.

    Some of the places have breathtaking views, others are filled with historic and architectural details, from stone archways, garden follies, boxwood mazes, ornamental statuary, stained glass, and Renaissance fountains. Follow a stone path under a trellis of blossoms or wander through a gate to discoverÉ

    Maximilien Aue has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France. An intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music, he is also a cold-blooded assassin and the consummate bureaucrat. Through the eyes of this cultivated yet monstrous man we experience in disturbingly precise detail the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Eichmann, Himmler, Göring, Speer, Heydrich, Höss—even Hitler himself—play a role in Max's story. An intense and hallucinatory historical epic, The Kindly Ones is also a morally challenging read. It holds a mirror up to humanity—and the reader cannot look away.

    Worse still, the press seem to have it in for him – his every move is headline news. When he discovers that the killer has killed before – that each murder is a homage to a classic crime novel – the fourth estate are quick to coin a nickname… The Novelist…With both men in the public eye, the case develops into a personal duel, each hell-bent on outsmarting the other. There can only be one winner – whoever has the least to lose…

    of full-color photos.

    Held every April since 1896, the race follows a 270-kilometer course between the suburbs of the French capital and the northern industrial city of Roubaix, and its long history and location have made it pivotal in attracting cycling's superstars and testing their reputations. This lavish, large-format book recounts the history and excitement of Paris-Roubaix. With authoritative text from the top sportswriters at France's "L'Equipe," the book presents the inside story of the race, its great riders, its traditions, and its secrets. Arranged chronologically, "Paris-Roubaix" includes an exclusive, behind-the-scenes chapter to bring readers directly into the action. Hundreds of spectacular color and black-and-white photos, many of them never before collected in book form, round out this memorable portrait of one of cycling's greatest events.

    Virginia Roush fell in love with Philippe d'Albert-Lake during a visit to France in 1936; they married soon after. In 1943, they both joined the Resistance, where Virginia put her life in jeopardy as she sheltered downed airmen and later survived a Nazi prison camp. After the war, she stayed in France with Philippe, and was awarded the L�gion d'Honneur and the Medal of Honor. She died in 1997.Judy Barrett Litoff brings together two rare documents--Virginia's diary of wartime France until her capture in 1944 and her prison memoir written immediately after the war. Masterfully edited, they convey the compassion and toughness of a nearly forgotten heroine as they provide an invaluable record of the workings of the Resistance by one of the very few American women who participated in it."An indelible portrait of extraordinary strength of character . . . [D'Albert-Lake] is sombre, reflective, and attentive to every detail."--The New Yorker"A sharply etched and moving story of love, companionship, commitment, and sacrifice. . . . This beautifully edited diary and memoir throw an original light on the French Resistance."--Robert Gildea, author of Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation, 1940-1945"At once a stunning self-portrait and dramatic narrative of a valorous young American woman . . . an exciting and gripping story, one of the best of the many wartime tales." --Walter Cronkite"An enthralling tale which brims with brave airmen and plucky heroines."--David Kirby, St. Petersburg Times

    The authors take us from Waterloo to Chirac’s slandering of British cooking, charting the cross-channel entanglement and its unparalleled breadth of cultural, economic and political influence. They illuminate the complexity of the relationship—rivalry, enmity, misapprehension and loathing mixed with envy, admiration and genuine affection—and the ways in which it has shaped the modern world, from North America to the Middle East to Southeast Asia, and is still shaping Europe today. They make clear that warfare between the two countries often went hand in hand with hardy, if hidden, strains of anglophilia and francophilia; conversely, though France and Britain were allies for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it has been an alliance almost as uneasy, as competitive and as ambivalent as the previous generations of warfare.Wonderfully written—acute, witty, consistently surprising—That Sweet Enemy is a triumph: an eye-opener for the experts, and a feast for the general reader.

    It is a literary tour de force, returning anew to challenge necessity itself, the most implacable of human certainties: you die in the end - and that's the end. For you, for me.

    His destination was 'La Folie', a dilapidated 15th century farmhouse in need of love and renovation in the heart of rural France...Inspired by the success of his column in the Daily Telegraph about La Folie, this book is his winningly honest account of his struggle to fulfil a childhood dream and become a Real Man - to make the journey from social townie to rugged, solitary paysan. And in chronicling his enthusiastic attempts at looking after livestock and coming to terms with the concept of living Abroad Alone, the author discovers what it takes to be a man at the beginning of the 21st century, especially if one is short sighted, flat footed and not very good at games.Life-affirming, laugh out loud funny (and boasting more than its fair share of larger-than-life locals, bilingual chickens, diminutive but over-sexed sheep, invisible rodents, manly power tools with unpronounceable names, plus the occasional femmes fatale), this tale of a new-found life in France with a cat, a piano and an aeroplane, is both an elegy for a world that's fast disappearing as a hymn to the simple pleasures of being alive.

    Forced to flee the Nazi Army, Jewish families found a safe haven in a small town in Le Chambon, France, where a community of Protestants, having once been persecuted for their religion, sympathized with their struggle and did all they could to hide them from the invaders that sought to do them harm.

    This text turns aside from the official portraits and great historical events to rediscover the private places and objects that reflect Marie Antoinettes personality and reveal her more directly to our modern gaze.

    Despite his small physical stature, the shadow of Napoleon is cast like a colossus, compelling all who would look at that epoch to chart their course by reference to him. For this reason, most historical accounts of the Napoleonic era-and there are many-tell the same Napoleon-dominated story over and over again, or focus narrowly on special aspects of it. Frederick Kagan, distinguished historian and military policy expert, has tapped hitherto unused archival materials from Austria, Prussia, France, and Russia, to present the history of these years from the balanced perspective of all of the major players of Europe. In The End of the Old Order readers encounter the rulers, ministers, citizens, and subjects of Europe in all of their political and military activity-from the desk of the prime minister to the pen of the ambassador, from the map of the general to the rifle of the soldier. With clear and lively prose, Kagan guides the reader deftly through the intriguing and complex web of international politics and war. The End of the Old Order is the first volume in a new and comprehensive four-volume study of Napoleon and Europe. Each volume in the series will surprise readers with a dramatically different tapestry of early nineteenth-century personalities and events and will revise fundamentally our ages-old understanding of the wars that created modern Europe.

    Targeted fold-out area maps guide your explorations through the sights and neighborhoods of Paris, both on and off the beaten path. Insider tips accompany this compilation of must-not-miss landmarks; arts and entertainment venues; and places to eat, drink, shop, and stay. You can't do without it! 216 pages plus 10 fold-out maps.

    And what ghost stories he has! In pursuit of his lifelong passion, he has traversed the globe capturing images of the supernatural in his signature, atmosphere-charged photographs. His latest work documents fifty haunted sites in France, from the burial place of Paris's finest in the P�re Lachaise cemetery, to the Sun King's Ch�teau de Versailles, and from the eerie abbey of the Mont St. Michel to the ch�teaux that dot the harsh landscape of the Pyrenees. France is rich in lore surrounding the Knights Templar, and Marsden has featured their stories prominently in this collection of indelible images.Each mysterious site has a tale behind it that is brought to life not only by Marsden's spectacular photography but also by his narrative that is worthy of a suspense novel. The personal experiences of this spellbinding storyteller will inspire fellow ghosthunters and convince the staunchest skeptic to reconsider the supernatural world.

    Museums, scholars and viewers regularly return to his oeuvre for reinterpretation, passionate and contradictory, of what it means to be Modern. In having followed a very personal calling--literally and figuratively interior, particularly compared to the work of friends like Matisse--Bonnard created work as innovative as any of his contemporaries'. His recurring themes--the nude (both classical and erotic), the landscape, domestic life, and the self-portrait--evolve with him from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, from Paris to the south of France, alive with constant reinvention. Although for Bonnard the subject was always important, his work navigates a sophisticated dialectic between the givens of perception and memory, between the image before our eyes and all that it suggests. This substantial reference includes work from the Hermitage and the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, which sponsored its publication. Contributors include Yve-Alain Bois, Sarah Whitfield, and Georges Roque. Photographs from Dina Verny and Henri Cartier-Bresson among others document the era and Bonnard's models as he saw them.

    Quite as much as the Duke of Wellington, it was this club-footed genius of French diplomacy who defeated the great conqueror and delivered France and all Europe from the Emperor's follies. From the Hardcover edition.

    Many rarely seen works are also featured and illustrate Monet's enduring ties to the Norman region. It was in Normandy that Monet began his painting career, and it was there that he met his first great mentor, Eugène Boudin. Monet developed a deep affection for the region. He would return time after time to depict its dramatic coastline, picturesque villages, and seaside resorts. Normandy has been a source of inspiration for artists over the centuries, and the catalogue puts Monet's work in context with those who came before—Corot, Millet, Courbet, Whistler, and Boudin—and his fellow revolutionaries—Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, Degas.Featuring more than sixty master works, Monet in Normandy marks one of the largest Impressionist exhibitions to be on view in the United States. Illuminating the essays are works by other great contemporaries such as Pissarro, Morisot, and Degas.

    Gorgeously illustrated as well as informative, One Hundred and One Beautiful Small Towns of France is a journey through the French countryside, a place where the pace slows, locals engage strangers in conversation, and every town has a unique story to tell. Travel between the hilltop towns of the Central Massif and the Pyrenees to rockbound coastal fishing villages in Normandy and Brittany. Breathtaking full-color photographs create the perfect atmosphere as you discover these unexplored places, and descriptive sidebars offer invaluable information on local curiosities to indulge, unique artisanal products to buy, and age-old culinary specialties to sample. A detailed appendix is the perfect source on where to shop, sightsee, and dine—avec plaisir! Whether you are an armchair traveler or a Francophile planning another trip, this volume is the guide to the hidden treasures of France that proves once and for all that the heart of this popular travel destination lies in the countryside far from the grandeur and pomp of Paris.

    First trained in drawing by Europe’s most famous classicist painter Jacques-Louis David, Ingres went to Rome in his twenties, where he immersed himself in Greco-Roman art and the works of Raphael, Holbein, and Titian, and, while in Florence in 1819, was greatly influenced by Masaccio. He returned to Paris in 1824 and started his triumphant career. In 1825 he was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor by King Charles X and was elected a member of the Academy. Though renowned for his painting of Oriental nudes reclining in harems or a Turkish baths, Ingres was also a master draughtsman, perhaps the most significant of the 19th century, and left 4000 sketches and drawings to his home town of Montauban. In opposition to the Romantics, Ingres upheld classical idealism with its clarity of line. His painting had a profound effect on artists like Edgar Degas and Pablo Picasso and influenced, amongst others, Cindy Sherman and David Hockney.

    Best known for her exquisite collection of love sonnets, Labé played off the Petrarchan male tradition with wit and irony, and her elegies respond with lyric skill to predecessors such as Sappho and Ovid. The first complete bilingual edition of this singular and broad-ranging female author, Complete Poetry and Prose also features the only translations of Labé's sonnets to follow the exacting rhyme patterns of the originals and the first rhymed translation of Labé's elegies in their entirety.

    Complete with facsimiles of key documents, it's a vivid introduction to Napoleon's astonishing career and his effect on world history. Best-selling author Richard Holmes brings the era's great battles to life while he recounts in detail how Napoleon transformed the French nation, forging a pattern that shapes modern governments to this day.

    For while Boucher's art charmed nouveau riche buyers and titled patrons, this was not always the case with critics, and modern scholarship has done little to challenge Diderot's eventual judgment that to admire Boucher's work is to be a stranger to "real taste, to the truth, to just ideas, and to the seriousness of art." This engaging study examines the motives behind the contemporaneous critical response to Boucher's picturesque repertoire of amorous peasants, blithe aristocrats, and fanciful mythological scenes, and to the rococo style in general. The vision of t rococo (feminine, aristocratic, decadent) and of Boucher (facile, libertine, debauched) that lingers in modern art history was invented by eighteenth-century critics bent on reform, both aesthetic and political. Exploring how the discrediting of Boucher and his school intersected with cultural debates about gender and class, this account of Boucher's art should persuade critics and admirers alike to take another, more considered look.

    At Versailles, twelve miles outside Paris, France's self-styled "Sun King" created not only Europe's most lavish palace, but, beginning in 1661, the most extensive gardens the Western world has ever seen. Assisting Louis in this enterprise was the low-born gardener André Le Nôtre, whose character and temperament were as different from those of his sovereign as it is possible to conceive. Where Louis was ruthless and relentlessly driven, Le Nôtre was down to earth, witty and amiable – and also phenomenally talented. While Louis could strike fear into the highest in the land with just a look, Le Nôtre enjoyed the king's trust and friendship for more than 40 years. In this lavishly illustrated book, Ian Thompson tells more comprehensively than ever before the intertwined stories of an extraordinary garden and an extraordinary friendship.

    Like many simple plans it went wrong before it started and they ended up with two dogs and a campervan named Tinkerbelle. On the second day of their journey Tinkerbelle begins to self-destruct, helped by the new dog who does his best to eat her from the inside out. This is their story, as they travel from sandy beaches to snow-topped mountains exploring the diverse cultures, cuisines and countryside making up the country called France. Their journey takes them to places out of the ordinary, meeting interesting characters and witnessing ancient traditions. While the dogs rejoice in the freedom they find running on the beaches, Susie and Terry spend a lot of time holding their breath, wondering whether Tinkerbelle will manage to negotiate impossible mountain routes and get them home before she completely disintegrates. Travels with Tinkerbelle is a revision of "A Perfect Circle," previously published by Transworld Publishers. Enhanced features of this edition include chapter by chapter map links of the journey.

    This book provides a multi-layered investigation of the repression through a critical examination of newly opened archives, oral sources, the press and contemporary political movements and debates. The roots of violence are traced back to counter-insurgency techniques developed by the French military in North Africa and introduced into Paris to crush the independence movement among Algerian migrant workers. The study shows how and why this event was rapidly expunged from public visibility in France, but was kept alive by immigrant and militant minorities, to resurface in a dramatic form after the 1980s. Through this case-study the authors explore both the dynamics of state terror as well as the complex memorial processes by which these events continue to inform and shape post-colonial society.

    She has looked directly at our diverse relationships to language in forms ranging from the early scrapbooks of the 1970s to the large sculpted words of the late 1990s, and others including personal diaries, letters, calligraphy, alphabets and primers. She works with the repeated, drawn, framed and sculpted word; newsprint, collage and montage of texts and photographs; and handwritten texts. Plays on words and palindromes turn up in her exhibition titles and, more recently, in her children's books. All of these uses of language stem as much from Dada and Surrealism as from the aesthetics of the banal and the everyday, and they give rise to unclassifiable texts, which call somewhere between a literature of the news item or photo-essay and poetic maxims for personal use. Messager's frequent recourse to copying down and to repetition then serves as a kind of exorcism: in those cases, writing is something like sewing, with a soothing function. The first section of Word for Word focuses on writing in Annette Messager's artworks. The second includes numerous texts published in magazines or catalogues, as well as unpublished notes on her work and personal reflections on art and life. All of her interviews from 1974 to the present are also included.

    Focusing on one of Matisse's greatest bodies of work and his last artistic creations, this flexi edition of essays and reproductions provides scholarship on this important period.

    Special Michelin reads-like-a-book format for easy use in folding and unfolding. Useful information for planning trips, including gas stations, 24-hour service stations, toll gates, rest areas and service plazas. Clear, precise cartography. Icons pinpoint important travel information.

    Acclaimed writer and translator Phyllis Birnbaum not only explores Foujita's fascinating, tumultuous life but also assesses the appeal of his paintings, which, in their mixture of Eastern and Western traditions, are memorable for their vibrancy of form and purity of line.

    The exploits of the 42nd (Black Watch), 77th (Montgomery's) and 78th (Fraser's) Highlanders, in some of the most bloody and desperate battles ever fought on the this continent, were a critical factor in transforming the overall image of Highlanders in the latter half of the 18th century from Jacobite rebels to Imperial heros. (Co-published with Fort Ticonderoga and Robin Brass Studio, Toronto)

    When John Russell is called to be whipping boy to the Dauphin of France, he doesn't realise that he and his little sister Lark, will turn the fortunes of three kingdoms.

    It illustrates the coming to the fore of French graphic design, information design, multimedia and television, and places graphic design amongst the fields of fine art, iconography, sculpture, literature, fashion, urban architecture and other artistic disciplines.

    The Iron Marshal charts the career of Davout from his enlistment as a volunteer in the Republican Army during the Napoleonic era to his appointment as Minister for War in 1815.

    While France has successfully integrated waves of immigrants in the past, this new influx poses a new variety of challenges—much as it does in neighboring European countries. Alarmists view the growing role of Muslims in French society as a form of "reverse colonization"; they believe Muslim political and religious networks seek to undermine European rule of law or that fundamentalists are creating a society entirely separate from the mainstream. Integrating Islam portrays the more complex reality of integration's successes and failures in French politics and society. From intermarriage rates to economic indicators, the authors paint a comprehensive portrait of Muslims in France. Using original research, they devote special attention to the policies developed by successive French governments to encourage integration and discourage extremism. Because of the size of its Muslim population and its universalistic definition of citizenship, France is an especially good test case for the encounter of Islam and the West. Despite serious and sometimes spectacular problems, the authors see a "French Islam" slowly replacing "Islam in France"–in other words, the emergence of a religion and a culture that feels at home in, and is largely at peace with, its host society. Integrating Islam provides readers with a comprehensive view of the state of Muslim integration into French society that cannot be found anywhere else. It is essential reading for students of French politics and those studying the interaction of Islam and the West, as well as the general public.

    He quickly came to admire and respect the men of G Company, then was close by as one by one many of them died during the horrific fighting in the fields and streets of a normally beautiful and tranquil land. Here are the realities of that war: opening the casualty blanket rolls, seeing the dead being buried in mattress covers, the sounds, the smells and the fears of men in infantry combat. A glimpse, too, of the boys who fought the battles of World War II as they grew up or matured during the Great Depression, the rigors of infantry basic training, life in England in the weeks leading up to D-Day.

    With beautifully commissioned photographs and spectacular 3-D aerial views revealing the charm of each destination, these amazing travel guides show what others only tell.

    The 81 magnificent sculpted heads featured in this volume provide a sweeping view of the Middle Ages, from the waning days of the Roman Empire to the dawn of the Renaissance. Each sculpture bears eloquent witness to its own remarkable history, whether it was removed because of changing tastes or for political reasons, such as being cut off the head of a king on a grand cathedral facade. The book is organized into seven thematic sections, including “Iconoclasm” and “The Stone Bible,” which explore the process of reconnecting these works to their origins using both traditional art historical methods as well as the latest scientific technology. An essay on medieval physiognomy by the distinguished scholar Willibald Sauerländer introduces the volume.

    They flocked to the studios of French artists like Jean-Léon Gérôme, William Bouguereau, and others, dreamed of showing their work at the annual Paris Salon, and watched intently as new styles such as Impressionism began to take hold. Hardly an American painter was unaffected by developments in Paris, and even those who chose not to study there wanted their work to be affirmed by French audiences and taste makers.This beautifully illustrated book traces the role of American artists in Paris from the Salon des Refusés, in 1863, to the emergence of a uniquely American style of painting at the turn of the century. It includes iconic images by John Singer Sargent, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, and Winslow Homer, and by many other artists whose names and work were more widely known then than now.Engaging essays written by notable scholars explore why artists were drawn to Paris, how they responded to what they found there, and what they retained of their experience. In addition, the significance of the Expositions Universelles, the French view of American artists in Paris, and the role these artists played in shaping the great American collections of modern French painting are discussed. Featuring more than 100 paintings, the essays are followed by artists’ biographies, an illustrated, annotated list of works, and a complete bibliography.

    For Marlaud, this involves carrying out a meager existence on rue Froidevaux in Paris, tending to his father’s grave in the cemetery across the street, and earning the ghost of a living through a part-time job at the funerary shop on the corner. It does not, however, take into account the amorous intentions of the obese concierge of his building, who has set her widowed sights on his diminutive frame, and whose aggressive overtures will set the wheels in motion for a burlesque and obscene tragedy. Originally published in 1979, The High Life introduces cult French author Jean-Pierre Martinet into English. It is a novella that perfectly outlines the dark fare of Martinet’s vision: the terrors of loneliness, the grotesque buffoonery of sexual relations, the essential humiliation of the human condition, and the ongoing trauma of twentieth-century history.

    Sir Arthur Harris remains the target of criticism and vilification by many, while others believe the contribution he and his men made to victory is grossly undervalued. Henry Probert's critical but sympathetic new account draws on recent research and, for this first time, all of Harris's own extensive papers, to give outstanding insight into a man who combined leadership, professionalism and decisiveness with kindness, humor and generosity. Bomber Harris provides the most complete picture of one of the great commanders of modern times and an outstanding military personality of World War II. Air Commodore Probert was formerly Head of the Air Historical Branch. Correlli Barnett is a world-renowned historian whose books have been translated into many languages.

    Among them, Bouguereau instructed more than two hundred young American artists. In the Studios of Paris provides a unique look at the history of Parisian art education during the last quarter of the 19th century and its profound influence on American art.This landmark publication—the first to focus exclusively on Bouguereau and his American pupils—presents sixty-five paintings, drawings, and prints by the master and eleven of his most prominent students, including Eanger Irving Couse, Elizabeth Gardner Bouguereau, and Robert Henri. A series of carefully researched essays place the artists’ work in historical context and discuss various American responses to Bouguereau’s painting and pedagogical techniques, along with the subsequent reception and collecting of their work in the United States.

    During the years that overlap between the fin-de-siecle and the Belle Epoque, women began to write in record numbers, due to a number of factors including educational reforms and demographic shifts. This trend terrified many male literary critics, who described it as the crisis of women's writing in a series of efforts to circumscribe the perceived problem. Such critics frequently linked women's writing to sexual depravity. According to popular medical theories, the fragile confluence of the female mind and body might steer the woman writer towards illicit sexual behavior when she exercised her intellect.This book argues, however, that the fear of sexual abandon--though real--veiled an even more insidious fear: that women might be capable of intellectual equality with men and thus pose a threat to the most basic structures of French patriarchal society. In demonstrating the pervasiveness of this anxiety through analysis of nineteenth-century medical texts, literary criticism, and fiction, The Hysteric's Revenge brings into relief a critical relationship between the female mind and body that is essential to understanding the discursive position of the turn-of-the-century woman writer.The novels presented here confront this mind/body problem through a wide variety of styles and genres that challenge conventional fin-de-siecle notions of femininity. From the compelling autobiography of Liane de Pougy--one of Paris's most renowned courtesans--to Colette's frank discussions of female pleasure in one of her early novels, to the violent creativity of Rachilde's androgynous heroine, Mesch demonstrates how both canonical and non-canonical writers promoted women's intellectual authority through the development of a sexual counter-discourse. In engaging the relationship between women's minds and bodies, these novels challenge the conclusions of a century of doctors who sought to prove a physiological basis for female intellectual inferiority. At the same time, they point the way towards later French feminists who sought to subvert patriarchal structures through literary explorations of sexuality.

    A young turk from the provinces who made his mark in Paris, he promoted his image as a gregarious outsider, passionate, physically robust, and profoundly ambitious. Drawing inspiration from natural motifs, Courbet reset the course of French painting to embrace immediacy, vitality, and painterly self-expression.Courbet and the Modern Landscape accompanies the first major museum exhibition to address the artist's extraordinary achievement in the genre of landscape painting. The book illustrates a highly selective group of landscapes from 1855 to 1877, most of them from the 1860s, when Courbet discovered in the countryside of his native Franche-Comté and on the shores of the Normandy coast a consistently rich source of visual stimulation. Many of the paintings—from collections in Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—will be new to general readers of art history, and their juxtaposition will be a revelation to both experts and amateurs alike. Essays by the curators examine Courbet's distinctly modern practice of landscape painting. Mary Morton's essay situates his landscapes in relation to his work in other genres, his critical reputation, and his role in establishing a new pictorial language for landscape painting. Charlotte Eyerman's essay investigates how later generations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists responded to Courbet's example. The catalogue also includes an essay by Dominique de Font-Reaulx, curator of photographs at the Musee d'Orsay, on the relationship between Courbet's work and landscape photography of the 1850s and 1860s.

    She spent three years lovingly restoring the farmhouse, bringing back to life the abandoned apple and pear orchards, and planting an olive grove of more than two thousand trees. In My French Life, Vicki shares an insider?s view of life in France? from its landscapes, delicious food, and scents to its charming people. And she offers an intimate portrait of what it?s like to adopt a new home on the other side of the globe. It?s a personal tale of taking risks, facing challenges, and the joyous experience of falling in love with all things French. With lavish four-color photography that captures the essence of French style, My French Life is a book to cherish. It is the perfect gift for the holidays.

    Here it is assumed to consist of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Palestine. Much has been written on the history of these countries which were taken from the Ottoman empire after 1918 and became Mandates under the League of Nations. For the most part the histories of these countries have been handled either individually or as part of the history of Britain or France. In the first instance the emphasis has normally been on the development of nationalism and local resistance to alien control in a particular territory, leading to the modern successor state. In the second most studies have concentrated separately on how either France or Britain handled the great problems they inherited, seldom comparing their strategies.The aim of this book is to see the region as a whole and from both the European and indigenous points of view. The central argument is that the mandate system failed in its stated purpose of establishing stable democratic states out of what had been provinces or parts of provinces within the Ottoman empire. Rather it generated basically unstable polities and, in the special case of Palestine, one totally unresolved, and possibly unsolvable, conflict. The result was to leave the Middle East as perhaps the most volatile part of the world in the later twentieth century and beyond. The main purpose of the book is to examine why this was so.

    Frederick Brown's insightful portrayal is of an artist fraught with contradictions, his wit and bravado merging into vulnerability. A sedentary man by nature, Flaubert undertook epic voyages through Egypt and the Middle East. He could be flamboyantly uncouth but was fanatically devoted to beautifully cadenced prose. While energized by his camaraderie with male friends, who included Turgenev, the Goncourt brothers, Zola, and Maupassant, he depended upon the emotional nurture of maternal women, notably George Sand. His assorted mistresses--French, Egyptian, and English--fed his richly erotic imagination and found their way into his fictional characters.Flaubert's time and place caused him to be literally put on trial for portraying lewd behavior in Madame Bovary. His milieu also made him a celebrity and, indirectly, brought about his financial ruin, probably hastening his sudden death at the the age of fifty-nine. Although writing was something like torture for him, it preoccupied his mind and dominated his life. He privately dreamed of popular success, which he in fact achieved with Madame Bovary, but adamantly refused to sacrifice to it his ideal of artistic integrity. About Flaubert's life, inner world, times, and legacy, Frederick Brown's magisterial biography is a revelation.

    Over five months of desperate fighting in 1916 the British wrestled with the Germans for control of a narrow strip of innocuous French countryside. When the fighting petered out the British had barely pushed back the Germans from their original positions for a combined casualty figure of over a million men. But after 80 years this notorious episode in western military history deserves to be reassessed.Previously unpublished eyewitness accounts are used to give a fascinating first-hand view of the immediate experience of the fighting. As Martin Pegler shows, a revision in our assessment of the Somme, in particular of the tactics and the weaponry employed by the combatants, is overdue, and he challenges the traditional assumptions about the course of the battle and its future impact on the development of warfare.

    The field of French history has been vastly influential in American thought, both within the academy and beyond, regardless of France's standing among U.S. political and cultural elites. Even though other countries, from Britain to China, may have had a greater impact on American history, none has exerted quite the same hold on the American historical imagination, particularly in the post-1945 era.To gain a fresh perspective on this passionate relationship, Laura Lee Downs and St�phane Gerson commissioned a diverse array of historians to write autobiographical essays in which they explore their intellectual, political, and personal engagements with France and its past. In addition to the essays, Why France? includes a lengthy introduction by the editors and an afterword by one of France's most distinguished historians, Roger Chartier. Taken together, these essays provide a rich and thought-provoking portrait of France, the Franco-American relationship, and a half-century of American intellectual life, viewed through the lens of the best scholarship on France.

    In Insister, she brings a unique mixture of scholarly erudition, theoretical speculation, and breathtaking textual explication to an extremely close reading of Derrida's work. At the same time, Insister is an extraordinarily poetic meditation, a work of literature and of mourning for Jacques Derrida the person, who was a close friend and accomplice of Cixous's from the beginning of their careers.In a melodic stream-of-consciousness Cixous speaks to Derrida, to his memory and to the words he left behind. She delves into the philosophical spaces that separated them, filling them out to create new understandings, bringing Derrida's words back to life while insisting on our inability to ever truly communicate through words. "More than once we say the same words," Cixous writes, "but we do not live them in the same tone." Insister of Jacques Derrida joins Veils, the two loosely autobiographical texts of Derrida and Cixous published together by Stanford in 2001.

    The philosophical roots of the concept of the unconscious in Leibniz, Kant, Schelling and Schopenhauer had also been occluded from view by the dominance of Freudianism. From his earliest work of the 1940s until his final writings of the 1990s, Gilles Deleuze stood at odds with this dominant current, rejecting Freud as sole source for ideas about the unconscious. This most 'contemporary' of French philosophers acted as custodian of all the ideas that had been rejected by the proponents of the psychoanalytic model, carefully preserving them and, when possible, injecting them with new life. In 1950s and 60s Deleuze turned to Henri Bergson's theories of memory and instinct and to Carl Jung's theory of archetypes. In Difference and Repetition (1968) he conceived of a 'differential unconscious' based on Leibnizian principles. He was also immersed from the beginning in esoteric and occult ideas about the nature of the mind. Deleuze and the Unconscious shows how these tendencies combine in Deleuze's work to engender a wholly new approach to the unconscious, for which active relations to the unconscious are just as important as the better known pathologies of neurosis and psychosis.

    They contain not only important military information, but fascinating political, social and personal commentaries that are critical to understanding Napoleon the man as well as Napoleon the soldier. Presented complete for the first time in English, and supported by Markham's historical and biographical notes, the bulletins cover the key period between the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 and the collapse of Napoleon's Empire in 1814. The bulletins describe military operations, pick out distinguished officers and units, and present Napoleon's own interpretation of battles lost and won. Also included are various key reports from marshals and others, including the bulletins of the Army of Italy commanded by Massena in 1805. Most of this additional material has never been published in English until now. Imperial Glory is an invaluable contribution to literature on the Napoleonic Wars and a key book for anyone who would like to learn more about one of history's most remarkable and colorful leaders.

    A dynamic view of the politics of cultural exchange between Africa and France

    World War II and the division of France into two ideological camps, each asking for legitimacy from the colonized, opened for Africans numerous unprecedented options. French Colonialism Unmasked analyzes three dramatic years in the history of FWA, from 1940 to 1943, in which the Vichy regime tried to impose the ideology of the National Revolution in the region. Ruth Ginio shows how this was a watershed period in the history of the region by providing an in-depth examination of the Vichy colonial visions and practices in fwa. She describes the intriguing encounters between the colonial regime and African society along with the responses of different sectors in the African population to the Vichy policy. Although French Colonialism Unmasked focuses on one region within the French Empire, it has relevance to French colonial history in general by providing one of the missing pieces in research on Vichy colonialism.

    This book addresses the topic of educational technology from several perspectives: the political objections to project design, the field historical background, the theoretical approaches underlying suggestions and guidelines for teaching material production.

    Vauban under Siege is the first systematic comparison of the theory of Vaubanian siegecraft with its reality, contrasting military engineering's pursuit of the efficient siege with generals' contradictory search for rapid conquest, purchased at the cost of additional lives.

    Delia Gray-Durant carefully takes us through this unforgettable area, offering detailed information on everything from art and architecture to where to stay and the best festivals to attend.

    --from Coma The novelist and playwright Pierre Guyotat has been called the last great avant-garde visionary of the twentieth century, and the near-cult status of his work--because of its extreme linguistic innovation and its provocative violence--has made him one of the most influential of French writers today. He has been hailed as the true literary heir to Lautr?amont and Arthur Rimbaud, and his "inhuman" works have been mentioned in the same breath as those by Georges Bataille and Antonin Artaud.Winner of the 2006 prix D?cembre, Coma is the deeply moving, vivid portrayal of the artistic and spiritual crisis that wracked Guyotat in the 1980s when he reached the physical limits of his search for a new language, entered a mental clinic, and fell into a coma brought on by self-imposed starvation. A poetic, cruelly lucid account, Coma links Guyotat's illness and loss of subjectivity to a broader concern for the slow, progressive regeneration of humanity. Written in what the author himself has called a "normalized writing," this book visits a lifetime of moments that have in common the force of amazement, brilliance, and a flash of life. Grounded in experiences from the author's childhood and his family's role in the French Resistance, Coma is a tale of initiation that provides an invaluable key to interpreting Guyotat's work, past and future.