Not only are there frequent references to specific works of art, but certain characters are also evoked by comparison to particular paintings. Bloch’s appearance as a boy is likened to the portrait of Mehmet II by Gentile Bellini; Odette de Crécy strikes Swann by her resemblance to a figure in a Botticelli fresco. Even the lesser figure of a certain Mme. Blattin becomes the subject of Proustian mischief by being described as “exactly the portrait of Savonarola by Fra Bartolomeo.” Eric Karpeles has identified and located the many paintings to which Proust makes reference and sets them alongside the relevant text from the novel; in other cases, where only a painter’s name is mentioned to indicate a certain style or appearance, Karpeles has chosen a representative work to illustrate the impression that Proust sought to evoke.With some 200 paintings beautifully reproduced in full color and texts drawn from the Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright translation, as well as concise commentaries on the evolving narrative, this book is an essential addition to the libraries of Proustians everywhere. The book also includes an authoritative introduction and a comprehensive index of artists and paintings mentioned in the novel.

    Presenting itself as an investigation into the suicide of a close friend—perhaps real, perhaps fictional—more than twenty years earlier, Levé gives us, little by little, a striking portrait of a man, with all his talents and flaws, who chose to reject his life, and all the people who loved him, in favor of oblivion. Gradually, through Levé’s casually obsessive, pointillist, beautiful ruminations, we come to know a stoic, sensible, thoughtful man who bears more than a slight psychological resemblance to Levé himself. But Suicide is more than just a compendium of memories of an old friend; it is a near-exhaustive catalog of the ramifications and effects of the act of suicide, and a unique and melancholy farewell to life.

    Berr brought a keen literary sensibility to her writing, a talent that renders the story it relates all the more rich, all the more heartbreaking. The first day Berr has to wear the yellow star on her coat, she writes, “I held my head high and looked people so straight in the eye they turned away. But it’s hard.” More, many more, humiliations were to follow, which she records, now with a view to posterity. She wants the journal to go to her fiancé, who has enrolled with the Free French Forces, as she knows she may not live much longer. She was right. The final entry is dated February 15, 1944, and ends with the chilling words: “Horror! Horror! Horror!” Berr and her family were arrested three weeks later. She went — as was discovered later — on the death march from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, where she died of typhus in April 1945, within a month of Anne Frank and just days before the liberation of the camp.The journal did eventually reach her fiancé, and for over fifty years it was kept private. In 2002, it was donated to the Memorial of the Shoah in Paris. Before it was first published in France in January 2008, translation rights had already been sold for twelve languages.

    He’s carrying a briefcase whose contents he’s selling to a representative from the Vatican; the briefcase contains a wealth of information about the violent history of the Zone—the lands of the Mediterranean basin, Spain, Algeria, Lebanon, Italy, that have become Mirković’s specialty.Over the course of a single night, Mirković visits the sites of these tragedies in his memory and recalls the damage that his own participation in that violence—as a soldier fighting for Croatia during the Balkan Wars—has wreaked in his own life. Mirkovic´ hopes that this night will be his last in the Zone, that this journey will expiate his sins, and that he can disappear with Sashka, the only woman he hasn’t abandoned, forever . . .One of the truly original books of the decade—and written as a single, hypnotic, propulsive, physically irresistible sentence—Mathias Énard’s Zone provides an extraordinary and panoramic view of the turmoil that has long deviled the shores of the Mediterranean.

    Calasso ranges through Baudelaire's life and work, focusing on two painters—Ingres and Delacroix—about whom Baudelaire wrote acutely, and then turns to Degas and Manet, who followed in the tracks Baudelaire laid down in his great essay "The Painter of Modern Life." In Calasso's lavishly illustrated mosaic of stories, insights, close readings of poems, and commentaries on paintings, Baudelaire's Paris comes brilliantly to life. In the eighteenth century, a folie was a garden pavilion set aside for people of leisure, a place of delight and fantasy. Following Baudelaire, Calasso has created a brilliant and dramatic "Folie Baudelaire"—a place where the reader can encounter the poet himself, his peers, his city, and his extraordinary likes and dislikes, finally discovering that that place is situated in the middle of the land of "absolute literature."

    It tells the story of a lion who, bored by his rural life in the savanna, seeks excitement and opportunity in the City of Light. Upon arriving in Paris, the lion is disappointed to find that despite his size, people barely pay attention to him, not even when he lets out a ferocious roar on the busy underground Métro. Revealing the sights and sounds of Paris from Montmartre to the Eiffel Tower, this beautifully illustrated book successfully conveys the experience of being a stranger in a new city and the process of understanding one’s own identity.

    . . . If you’re passionate about eating well during your next trip to Paris, you couldn’t ask for a better travel companion than Alexander Lobrano’s charming, friendly, and authoritative Hungry for Paris, the first new comprehensive guide in many years to the city’s restaurant scene. Lobrano, Gourmet magazine’s European correspondent, has written for almost every major food and travel magazine since he became an American in Paris in 1986. Here he shares his personal selection of the city’s 102 best restaurants, each of which is portrayed in savvy, fun, lively descriptions that are not only indispensable for finding a superb meal but a pleasure to read. Lobrano reveals the hottest young chefs, the coziest bistros, the best buys–including those haute cuisine restaurants that are really worth the money–and the secret places Parisians love most, together with information on the most delicious dishes, ambience, clientele, and history of each restaurant. A series of delightful essays cover various aspects of dining in Paris, including “Table for One” (how to eat alone), “The Four Seasons” (the best of seasonal eating in Paris), and “Eating the Unspeakable” (learning to eat what you don’t think you like). All restaurants are keyed to helpful maps, and the book is seasoned with beautiful photographs by Life magazine photographer Bob Peterson that will only help whet your appetite for tasting Paris.

    In My Fantoms Richard Holmes, the celebrated biographer of Shelley and Coleridge, has found a brilliantly effective new way to bring this great but too-little-known writer into English. My Fantoms assembles seven stories spanning the whole of Gautier’s career into a unified work that captures the essence of his adventurous life and subtle art. From the erotic awakening of “The Adolescent” through “The Poet,” a piercing recollection of the mad genius Gérard de Nerval, the great friend of Gautier’s youth, My Fantoms celebrates the senses and illuminates the strange disguises of the spirit, while taking readers on a tour of modernity at its most mysterious. ”What ever would the Devil find to do in Paris?” Gautier wonders. “He would meet people just as diabolical as he, and find himself taken for some naïve provincial…”Tapestries, statues, and corpses come to life; young men dream their way into ruin; and Gautier keeps his faith in the power of imagination: “No one is truly dead, until they are no longer loved.”

    From the ultra-hot Colette fashion concept store to Tom Ford's secret hideaway to Hemingway's favorite brasserie, all of the best insider tips are gathered together between these covers so that when you hop out from under yours, you'll have plenty of exciting things on your agenda.

    His cooking has been described as 'an extraordinary process of creativity, passion, subtlety, indeed genius'. His life and career to date have been utterly dedicated to the search for culinary perfection.Raymond is entirely self-taught and over the years has been developing and refining his philosophy of food and eating. Such is his reputation that his restaurant near Oxford, Le Manoir, was awarded two Michelin stars even before it opened in 1984. He has taught many of Britain's most successful chefs, including Marco Pierre White and Heston Blumenthal. He has maintained extraordinary levels of excellence at Le Manoir for over two decades and it remains one of our premier destination restaurants.Now, for the first time Raymond is going to share the fruits of all that hard work and experimentation, and reveal the secrets of his gastronomy. Woven around stories from his years at the sharp end of the food business are his thoughts about where food is going and a passionate appeal for sustainable cuisine. Essential reading for anyone with an interest in food and cooking, this is the definitive book by a culinary genius.

    A time of decadence in a country embroiled in revolution. An unforgettably high-spirited heroine. Set in opulent, decadent, turbulent revolutionary France, Mistress of the Revolution is the story of Gabrielle de Montserrat. An impoverished noblewoman blessed with fiery red hair and a mischievous demeanor, Gabrielle is only fifteen when she meets her true love, a commoner named Pierre-André Coffinhal. But her brother forbids their union, choosing for her instead an aging, wealthy baron. Widowed and a mother while still a teen, Gabrielle arrives at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in time to be swept up in the emerging cataclysm. As a new order rises, Gabrielle finds her own lovely neck on the chopping block—and who should be selected to sit on the Revolutionary Tribunal but her first love, Pierre-André. . . . Replete with historical detail, complex and realistic characters (several of whom actually existed), and a heroine who demands—and rewards—attention, Mistress of the Revolution is an unforgettable debut. A stunning new talent in historical fiction makes her debut with a novel perfect for readers of In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant

    But which patisserie has the most intensely flavored macarons, the most sophisticated chocolates, or a croissant that is truly beyond compare? In the pages of The Patisseries of Paris, you'll find the most enticing sweets in Pairs. You'll discover what time of day Parisians in the know get items as they come out of the oven, the museums with the most stylish cafes, and other charming spots for light meals. This is the essential guide for anyone who wants to experience French culture, bite by delicious bite.

    The tale of a young girl who challenges conventions to engage in Jewish learning; Set in 11th-century Troyes, France, Rashi’s Daughter, Secret Scholar tells the story of Joheved, eldest daughter of Salomon ben Isaac (known as Rashi), one of the great medieval Jewish Bible commentators. At a time when women traditionally were barred from studying Jewish texts, Rashi secretly teaches first Joheved, then her sister Miriam. By day, Joheved helps in running the household and the family winemaking business, and by night she studies Talmud with her father. As she nears marriageable age, Joheved finds her mind and spirit awakened by religious study, but she must keep her passion for learning and prayer hidden. When she becomes betrothed to Meir ben Samuel, she is forced to choose between marital happiness and being true to her love of the Talmud. Will she fulfill the expected role of a Jewish woman or pursue a path of Jewish learning?

    Yet behind this triumph lay struggle, heartbreak, bitterness, frustration, lost love, exile—and above all the miracle of survival.Born into near poverty in Russia in 1887, the son of a Jewish herring merchant, Chagall fled the repressive “potato-colored” tsarist empire in 1911 for Paris. There he worked alongside Modigliani and Léger in the tumbledown tenement called La Ruche, where “one either died or came out famous.” But turmoil lay ahead—war and revolution; a period as an improbable artistic commissar in the young Soviet Union; a difficult existence in Weimar Germany, occupied France, and eventually the United States. Throughout, as Jackie Wullschlager makes plain in this groundbreaking biography, he never ceased giving form on canvas to his dreams, longings, and memories. His subject, more often than not, was the shtetl life of his childhood, the wooden huts and synagogues, the goatherds, rabbis, and violinists—the whole lost world of Eastern European Jewry. Wullschlager brilliantly describes this world and evokes the characters who peopled it: Chagall’s passionate, energetic mother, Feiga-Ita; his eccentric fellow painter and teacher Bakst; his clever, intense first wife, Bella; their glamorous daughter, Ida; his tough-minded final companion and wife, Vava; and the colorful, tragic array of artist, actor, and writer friends who perished under the Stalinist regime.Wullschlager explores in detail Chagall’s complex relationship with Russia and makes clear the Russian dimension he brought to Western modernism. She shows how, as André Breton put it, “under his sole impulse, metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting,” and helped shape the new surrealist movement. As art critic of the Financial Times, she provides a breadth of knowledge on Chagall’s work, and at the same time as an experienced biographer she brings Chagall the man fully to life—ambitious, charming, suspicious, funny, contradictory, dependent, but above all obsessively determined to produce art of singular beauty and emotional depth.Drawing upon hitherto unseen archival material, including numerous letters from the family collection in Paris, and illustrated with nearly two hundred paintings, drawings, and photographs, Chagall is a landmark biography to rank with Hilary Spurling’s Matisse and John Richardson’s Picasso.

    Advancing his reflection on many issues, such as sexual difference, architecture, negative theology, politics, war, nationalism, and religion, Volume II also carries on Derrida's engagement with a number of key thinkers and writers: De Certeau, Heidegger, Kant, Lacoue-Labarthe, Mandela, Rosenszweig, and Shakespeare, among others. Included in this volume are new or revised translations of seminal essays (for example, "Geschlecht I: Sexual Difference, Ontological Difference," "Geschlecht II: Heidegger's Hand," "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," and "Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, the German").

    In a collection of fictions that blur distinctions between dreaming and waking reality, Lutz Bassmann sets off a series of echoes—the “entrevoutes” that conduct us from one world to another in a journey as viscerally powerful as it is intellectually heady.  While humanity seems to be fading around them, the members of a shadowy organization are doing their inadequate best to assist those experiencing their last moments. From a soldier-monk exorcising what seem to be spirits (but are they?) from an abandoned house, to a spy executing a mission whose meaning eludes him, to characters exploring cells, wandering through ruins, confronting political dissent and persecution, encountering—perhaps—the spirits once exorcised, these stories conduct us through a world at once ambiguous and sharply observed. This remarkable work, in Jordan Stump’s superb translation, offers readers a thrilling entry into Bassmann’s numinous world.

    With a staunch belief that the only way to survive a war is on a farm, Severin ignores the criticism of his friends and neighbors to move his family as far from the Belgian border as possible, knowing that the Germans will easily invade the tiny country. Given a Buick for the trip by his father-in-law, André, his family, his brother's family and his parents, pile in the car and flee across the border to France just days ahead of the Nazi invasion of Belgium. Seeking survival and a meaningful God, André leads his family deep into the Cévennes Mountains of the south of France. Non-practicing but part of a large Jewish family, they find protection among the Protestant Huguenots. When the Gestapo orders the arrest of the Severins, the French Marquis hides the family as Andr? joins the Resistance. In This Hospitable Land is a tale of simple courage and the depths of human compassion in a time of horror.

    Even today, over a century after his death in 1891, his visionary poetry has continued to influence everyone from Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan to Patti Smith. His long poem A Season in Hell (1873) and his collection Illuminations (1886) are essential to the modern canon, marked by a hallucinatory and hypnotic style that defined the Symbolist movement in poetry. Having sworn off writing at the age of twenty-one, Rimbaud drifted around the world from scheme to scheme, ultimately dying from an infection contracted while running guns in Africa. He was thirty-seven. Edmund White writes with a historian's eye for detail, driven by a genuine personal investment in his subject. White delves deep into the young poet's relationships with his family, his teachers, and his notorious affair with the more established poet Paul Verlaine. He follows the often elusive (sometimes blatant) threads of sexual taboo that haunt Rimbaud's poems (in those days, sodomy was a crime) and offers incisive interpretations of the poems, using his own artful translations to bring us closer to the mercurial poet.

    Pierre Senges’s Fragments of Lichtenberg imaginatively and hilariously reconstructs the efforts of scholars across three centuries to piece together Lichtenberg’s disparate notes into a coherent philosophical or artistic statement. What emerges instead from their efforts are a wide variety of conflicting and competing Lichtenbergs – the poet, the physicist, the philosopher, the humorist – and a very funny meditation on the way interpretations and speculation create new histories and new realities.

    Featuring 53 double-page plates of 4.300 technical drawings explaining the design as well as 33 photographs of the construction, the book reveals the complex and fascinating process of bringing the Eiffel Tower to life. Though the technical drawing will especially appeal to designers wishing to discover the engineering genius behind Eiffels masterpiece, everyone can appreciate this very rare and special book about Pariss glorious mascot.

    Street artist Blek le Rat is revered and acknowledged by the international graffiti community, and his work has influenced CD design, advertising, and graphics, as well as the work of urban artists around the world.From small, simple stencils to complex multimedia events, Blek's distinctive art is showcased here for the first time, demonstrating the development of his technique and creativity over two decades, from his unique images of Lady Diana and kidnapped journalist Florence Aubenas to his iconic silhouette of a rat.The book features photographs of hundreds of Blek's works and an in-depth exploration of the method and meaning behind his stencils and posters, as well as a look at the evolution of urban art from New York, Paris, Barcelona, and Buenos Aires to London, Taipei, Naples, and Berlin.

    This book departs from such traditional interpretations of the infamous queen’s reign and chooses to reflect on the humanistic aspects of her private realm. To escape the formalities and royal obligations of Louis XVI’s court, Marie-Antoinette created a private realm of pleasure for herself at the Petit Trianon and Hameau, where she planted the first Anglo-Chinese garden; created a trysting grotto; a working farm; and revolutionized architecture and gardening trends for the century to come. Marie-Antoinette’s entire private domain and its story are told in beautiful photographic detail by François Halard for the first time since its recent restoration and accompanied by well-researched texts by garden expert Christian Duvernois.

    Even Degas himself, notoriously misogynistic, invited Mary Cassatt to exhibit with him (she was the only American to do so); and Marie Bracquemond also exhibited at the Impressionist exhibitions of 1879, 1880 and 1886, despite the discouragement of her husband. All of these women practiced and supported Impressionism from its earliest days, when it was still a popular sport to deride it. Nonetheless, for Morisot, Gonzalès, Bracquemond and Cassatt, the chances of equivalent long-term recognition were predictably slim, and while their own individual oeuvres were too strong and too omnipresent in their own time to be entirely eradicated from the annals of art, they have rarely received due attention in the hands of subsequent commentators. This stunning 400-page compendium, published to accompany the important traveling exhibition which goes to San Francisco in the summer of 2008, corrects this longstanding oversight, presenting these pioneering painters alongside each other for the first time, reproducing their oil paintings, pastels, watercolors, drawings and etchings and offering a cogent rebuttal of familiar Impressionist narratives.

    Now, with Rôtis, celebrated French chef Stéphane Reynaud shows that roasts aren’t just for Sundays. With recipes requiring as little as five minutes of preparation and with cooking times as little as 20 minutes, Reynaud suggests roasts for every day of the week: beef on Monday, veal on Tuesday, poultry on Wednesday, pork on Thursday, fish on Friday, lamb on Saturday, and all the rest on Sunday.And to accompany the feast, try the assortment of side dishes for every season, including a sumptuous slow-cooked ratatouille for the summer and traditional gratin dauphinois in the winter.Written in straightforward steps, with helpful suggestions for everything from tying a roast, keeping it moist, to serving your guests, and making use of leftovers (a Sunday night “TV sandwich”?), each recipe is accompanied by mouthwatering photographs and presented in a charming format that brings the delightful style of French markets into your home.

    In the first section which gives its title to the collection, a poetic sequence retells a real-life love affair from beginning to end, from the encounter to the break-up, through memories of love as it is remembered by the author and through the lens of pivotal and memorable movie scenes that seem to mirror her own experiences. With ritualistic cadence and use of the long line, the poems in this collection weave a web of stories that illustrate the ongoing interplay of personal experience and art, photographs, music and films that haunt us and make us who we are.

    These lyrical, resonant, strange, and imaginative poems echo in the mind and leave an indelible impression of the mysterious atmosphere of the redwood forests. Additional poems, inspired by the colorful paintings of German expressionist Franz Marc, blend and contrast dramatic imagery of red and blue horses with the tragic fate of Europe during World War I. Woven throughout are sensitive translations of original Chinese works and odes to the beauty of the Himalayas, influenced by the author's travel experiences in China and Nepal.

    This is especially true of the history of the Great War. In this, the first comprehensive survey of this exciting new field, Andrew Robertshaw and David Kenyon introduce the reader to the techniques that are employed and record, in vivid detail, many of the remarkable projects that have been undertaken. They show how archaeology can be used to reveal the position of trenches, dugouts and other battlefield features and to rediscover what life on the Western Front was really like. And they show how individual soldiers are themselves part of the story, for forensic investigation of the war dead is now so highly developed that individuals can be identified and their fate discovered.

    But Suite Française was only the coda to the brief yet remarkably prolific career of this nearly forgotten, magnificent novelist. Here in one volume are four of Némirovsky’s other novels–all of them newly translated by the award-winning Sandra Smith, and all, except DAVID GOLDER, available in English for the first time. DAVID GOLDER is the novel that established Néirovsky’s reputation in France in 1929 when she was twenty-six. It is a novel about greed and lonliness, the story of a self-made business man, once wealthy, now suffering a breakdown as he nears the lonely end of his life. THE COURILOF AFFAIR tells the story of a Russian revolutionary living out his last days–and his recollections of his first infamous assassination. Also included are two short, gemlike novels: THE BALL, a pointed exploration of adolescence and the obsession with status among the bourgeoisie; and SNOW IN AUTUMN, an evocative tale of White Russian émigrés in Paris after the Russian Revolution. Introduced by celebrated novelist Claire Messud, this collection of four spellbinding novels offers the same storytelling mastery, powerful clarity of language, and empathic grasp of human behavior that would give shape to Suite Française. (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

    Culled from newspapers, journals, and books, White Ink collects the best of these conversations, which address the major concerns of Cixous's critical work and features two dialogues with twentieth-century intellectuals Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida.The interviews in White Ink span more than three decades and include a new conversation with Susan Sellers, the book's editor and a leading Cixous scholar and translator. Cixous discusses her work and writing process. She shares her views on literature, feminism, theater, autobiography, philosophy, politics, aesthetics, religion, ethics, and human relations, and she reflects on her roles as poet, playwright, professor, woman, Jew, and, her most famous, "French feminist theorist." Sellers organizes White Ink in such a way that readers can grasp the development of Cixous's commentary on a series of vital questions. Taken together, the revealing performances in White Ink provide an excellent introduction this thinker's brave and vital work--each one an event in language and thought that epitomizes Cixous's intellectual and poetic force.

    Acclaimed Broadway playwright Ken Ludwig's humorous adaptation of this classic tale. First performed by the Bristol Old Vic in 2006. Based on Alexandre Dumas' timeless swashbuckler, The Three Musketeers tells the story of young d'Artagnan, who sets off for adventure in Paris and soon allies himself with the greatest heroes of the day - Musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis - to defend the honour of the Queen of France. New, innovative activities specifically tailored to support the KS3 Framework for Teaching English and help students to fulfil the Framework objectives. Activities include work on Speaking and Listening, close text analysis, and the structure of playscripts, and act as a springboard for personal writing.

    

    Born in Kiev in 1903, Nemirovsky immigrated to France during the Russian Revolution. A celebrated Parisian writer between the wars, she died in Auschwitz in 1942.Compiled with Nemirovsky’s daughter, Denise Epstein, Woman of Letters includes reproductions of more than one hundred photographs, letters, and documents from the family archive. The preface by Museum of Jewish Heritage Director David Marwell and Olivier Corpet addresses the current controversy surrounding accusations that Nemirovsky, though Jewish, wrote earlier works that could be considered anti-Semitic. Woman of Letters includes a translation, by Sandra Smith, of the last short story published in the author’s lifetime, along with notes for Captivity, the unfinished third volume of Suite Francaise. The book will accompany a traveling exhibition, on view at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York through 2008.The book contains an interview with Denise Epstein by Olivier Corpet; a short story, “The Virgins,” by Irene Nemirovsky; notes for Captivity; and a chronology of the life of Irene Nemirovsky by Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt.Olivier Corpet is founder and director of IMEC (l’Institut Memoires d l’Edition Contemporaine), the largest nongovernmental literary archive in France.Garrett White, founder of Five Ties Publishing, is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn. His translations include An Unspeakable Betrayal: Selected Writings of Luis Bunuel.

    Dazzled by everything French, she falls in love with a volatile French painter and they purchase an old farmhouse in the Breton countryside. When Marjorie's seemingly idyllic marriage begins to unravel, she forms a friendship with an elderly peasant woman, Jeanne, who is illiterate, has three cows to her name, and has never left the village. Their differences are staggering yet they forge a friendship that transforms one another's life.

    Better-known destinations include the châteaux of Chantilly and Rambouillet and Maurice Ravel's house in Montfort-l'Amaury, but the reader will also discover the Roman town of Senlis, the river-ports of Conflans-Ste Honorine and St Mammès, the Gothic church and medieval moats at Crécy-la-Chapelle, the old border-town and water-mills of Moret-sur-Loing which inspired the Impressionist painters, and the delightfully provincial atmosphere of Luzarches. Readers who are interested in discovering half-hidden châteaux and writers' country houses; walking, boating or dancing by the river; exploring old towns and country footpaths; and eating in family-run restaurants with 1950s décor and prices to match will find much here to treasure.Revised in 2010.

    For the French it was a defeat more complete and humiliating than Waterloo.Douglas Fermer's fresh study of this traumatic moment in European history reconsiders how the mutual fear and insecurity of two rival nations tempted their governments to seek a solution to domestic tensions by waging war against each other. His compelling narrative shows how war came about, and how the dramatic campaign of summer 1870 culminated in a momentous clash of arms at Sedan. He gives fascinating insights into the personalities and aims of the politicians and generals involved, but focuses too on the experiences of ordinary soldiers and civilians.

    The palace itself has been radically altered since 1789, and the court was long ago swept away. Versailles sets out to rediscover what is now a vanished world: a great center of power, seat of royal government, and, for thousands, a home both grand and squalid, bound by social codes almost incomprehensible to us today.Using eyewitness testimony as well as the latest historical research, Spawforth offers the first full account of Versailles in English in over thirty years. Blowing away the myths of Versailles, he analyses afresh the politics behind the Sun King’s construction of the palace and shows how Versailles worked as the seat of a royal court. He probes the conventional picture of a “perpetual house party” of courtiers and gives full weight to the darker side: not just the mounting discomfort of the aging buildings but also the intrigue and status anxiety of its aristocrats. The book brings out clearly the fateful consequences for the French monarchy of its relocation to Versailles and also examines the changing place of Versailles in France’s national identity since 1789. Many books have told the stories of the royals and artists living in Versailles, but this is the first to turn its focus on the palace itself---from architecture and politics to scandal and restoration.

    Deleuze's philosophy has always promised a revolution in ethical theories and in our understanding of the relation between language, thought and action. This book develops a critical reading of Deleuze's work in order to convey the potential and risks of his new approaches to questions of how to live an intense life in response to the excitement and danger of events. This interpretation covers all aspects of Deleuze's book, including engagements with phenomenology, with analytic philosophy of language, with stoicism, with literary theory and with psychoanalysis. Its aim is to open new debates and develop current ones around Deleuze's work in philosophy, politics, literature, linguistics and sociology.

    An alchemist, conspirator, and Freemason, Balsamo figures prominently in the eventual downfall of the French monarchy. This publication from Boomer Books is specially designed and typeset for comfortable reading.

    And this time, Aramis is embarking on the most perilous mission of all: to depose King Louis XIV and put his twin brother Philip on the throne instead. Since childhood, Philip has been hidden away so no one would know of his existence--but Aramis believes that he would be the superior ruler. Is Aramis right...or is he making a deadly mistake?

    Informative, intelligent and entertaining, this guide helps you discover the hidden pleasures of the City of Light, with insider tips on planning a sexy getaway in Paris, whether you’re traveling as a couple, with the ladies, or on a solo adventure of your own. First released in 2008, this completely revised, improved and expanded second edition with 352 pages and 295 photos includes: •    How Parisian women embrace pleasure and beauty in their everyday lives •    How to flirt like a local and decode French pick-up lines •    Intimate hotels and packing tips to set the scene for seduction •    The best Parisian fashion boutiques, beauty salons, and perfume shops •    Lessons in pole dance, striptease, pastry-making, or finding your personal style •    Erotic museums, art galleries, and book shops to get you in the mood •    Female-owned boutiques specializing in naughty toys, lingerie and fetishwear •    Drinking, dining, and afternoon tea recommendations for couples or solo ladies •    The best clubs and cocktail bars for mingling with the locals •    Kinky cabarets, burlesque shows, and masked costume balls •    An introductory peek into swingers’ clubs, fetish parties and couples-only parties •    Useful vocabulary and detailed resources for finding more informationNaughty Paris is made with high-quality matte paper, heavy cardstock for the cover, traditional offset printing methods, and sturdy Smyth-sewn binding. The second edition is “100% Made in France”, printed by a family-owned, certified green printer using only non-toxic, vegetable-based inks and paper from sustainably harvested trees. You get a book that looks great, feels good, and respects the planet.

    From the 15th century through the 20th, poets, novelists, and playwrights, famed for both their work and their lives, were shaped by this enchanting locale. From natives such as Molière, Genet, and Anaïs Nin, to expats like Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, and Gertrude Stein, author David Burke follows hundreds of writers through Paris's labyrinthine streets, inviting readers on his grand tour. Unique in scope and approach, Writers in Paris crosses from Right Bank to Left and on to the Ile de la Cité as it explores the alleyways and haunts frequented by the world's most storied writers. Burke focuses not only on their writing but on their passions, ecstasies, obsessions, and betrayals. Equally appealing to Francophiles and serious readers, this engaging book includes maps and more than 100 evocative photographs.

    Essays. Literary Criticism. Gustaf Sobin's final book of essays continues his meditations on the meaning of archaeological vestiges in the south of France. Sobin's writing synthesizes insights from anthropology, philosophy, theology, and the history of art to produce a spiritual and poetic travelogue through vanished time. Left uncompleted at the end of his life, the present volume would have concluded the trilogy whose first two volumes were published by University of California Press (Luminous Debris 1999] and Ladder of Shadows 2008]). The scope and ambition of Sobin's poetic archaeology can be compared only to Walter Benjamin's Arcades project, also left uncompleted, and which similarly sought to draw poetic and philosophical insights from the remnants of material culture.

    This lavishly illustrated history re-tells the story of the battle and Henry V's Normandy campaign from the perspective of the commander of the English archers, Sir Thomas Erpingham. Sir Thomas, an experienced warrior with military experience dating back 40 years is known for his brief but pivotal appearances in Shakespeare's Henry V, where he is correctly portrayed as an elderly, white haired veteran. At 57 he was one of the oldest there and a close personal confident of the King. But what was his background? How did he command his archers to such a place in history? And what role did the longbow and battlefield tactics play in the final analysis of victory?

    There he would be incarcerated in a cell next door to the Man with the Iron Mask. . .From a glittering zenith as the King’s first minister, builder of the chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte, collector of books, patron of the arts and lover of beautiful women, Fouquet had fallen like Icarus. Charged with embezzlement, he was convicted and sentenced to banishment until the King intervened to change his sentence to life imprisonment.Charles Drazin’s riveting account brings to life the rich and hazardous world in which Foucquet lived. But it is in his downfall and incarceration, which he bore with great fortitude, courage and humour, that Fouquet’s strength of character and grace emerge. The richness and contrasts of his remarkable story are done full justice in this compelling book.

    Yet he also created some of the most influential landscapes in Western art, endowing them with a poetic quality that has been admired by artists as different as Constable, Turner, and Cézanne. As the British critic William Hazlitt noted in 1844, “This great and learned man might be said to see nature through the glass of time.” This beautiful catalogue presents the first in-depth examination of Poussin’s landscapes. Featured here are more than 40 paintings, ranging from the artist’s early Venetian-inspired pastorals to his grandly structured and austere works, designed as metaphors or allegories for the processes of nature. Also included are approximately 60 drawings and essays by internationally renowned scholars who examine the painter’s visual, literary, and philosophical influences as well as his relationships with his patrons and his place in the art-historical canon.

    Pub Date :2012-07-02 Pages: 96 Language: English Publisher: Dorling Kindersley Travel Guid DK Eyewitness Pocket Map and Guide Paris welcomes you to a beautiful historic and cultural city. The book divides Paris into 14 areas and covers the city area by area.Packed with beautiful illustrations and providing information on all the highlights. it includes a survival guide. a day trip section to plan your visits to the major sites and practical information on getting around the city. Explore Paris effortlessly using the detailed fold -out map. This handy guide to the major sights of Paris serves a perfect companion to the Eyewitness travel guide.Plan your perfect day out in Paris with DK Eyewitness Pocket Map and Guide.

    Her book, Chocolate and Zucchini, introduced her to a wider, equally enthusiastic audience. Now in Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris, Clotilde reveals her all-time favorite food experiences in her native city. She takes us on a mouthwatering tour of the restaurants, markets, and shops she loves the most: from the best places to go for lunch, tea, or a glass of wine, to “neo bistros” and the newest places to find spectacular yet affordable meals. Packed with advice on everything from deciphering a French menu to ordering coffee correctly, this book is like having Clotilde as a personal guide. A dozen tempting recipes are also included, shared or inspired by Clotilde’s favorite chefs and bakers.For first-time visitors and seasoned travelers alike, Clotilde’s Edible Adventures in Paris offers invaluable insider recommendations on eating and shopping with Parisian panache.The best of Paris, featuring 164 restaurants, bistros, wine bars, and salons de thé, as well as over 130 bakeries, pastry shops, cheese shops, bookstores, chocolate and candy shops, cookware and tableware stores, specialty shops, outdoor markets, and much, much more!

    Follow Frommer's for an up-close and personal look at the City of Light's most culturally rich areas, from famous places to lesser-known gems. Filled with color photos, easy-to-follow maps, clear route directions, and helpful commentary, this guide makes it easy to find your way around.Let Frommer's take you to: Historic Paris, from the Romans to the revolution and the backstreets of the Bastille Bohemian Montmartre, the haunt of artists such as Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Picasso The Paris Meridian (The Da Vinci Code's "rose Line"), one-time rival to the Greenwich Meridian The iconic Eiffel Tower, the Bustling markets of Les Halles, and the banks of the Seine "Underground" Paris, from the Catacombs to the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise

    A gorgeous population of elaborate architectural ornaments, decorative motifs, and border elements, this collection of royalty-free art will inspire ideas for — and immediately embellish — a host of craft, design, and graphics projects. An exhaustive reference for artists and Baroque design enthusiasts.

    This book was published in conjunction with an exhibition of 74 paintings and 8 drawings that embody the core of the two artists' collaboration and explores their artistic relationship in detail. The artists' dynamic interaction began with their first meeting at the Academie Suisse, Paris, circa 1861, and continued through much of their careers. To examine the techniques that Cezanne and Pissarro each adopted in response to the other's work, the exhibition and book juxtapose related works by both artists, reuniting many of them for the first time since their creation. The friendship between Cezanne and Pissarro was of considerable importance within the development of early Modernism. An essay by Joachim Pissarro discusses this fascinating interchange and offers new insights into both the shared and the distinctive elements of the two artists' aesthetic sensibility.

    When author Rebecca Magniant moved to Paris five years ago, she made it her mission to find the best boutiques in the city–and that she did. When some of her finds impressed her impossibly chic belle mere (mother-in-law), she knew she was on to something. She went on to found Paris’s premiere shopping service, Chic Shopping Paris, and now reveals her prized list of boutiques whose offerings embody quintessential Parisian style. Even as the world seems to be getting smaller, with everything imaginable available on the Internet, there remain some things that can only be found where they are designed and made–in France. Chic Shopping Paris contains the best, offering clothing, jewelry, lingerie, makeup, shoes, hats, art supplies, toys, stationery, and more–more than eighty venues in all. So let the contents of Magniant’s little black book inspire you to bring back a piece of Paris in your bag.Some of the shops include•Da Rosa, an épicerie that supplies luxury products to some of the biggest restaurateurs in town•Blanc d’Ivorie, a shop specializing in gorgeous French linens and housewares that are all in white, gray, or beige tones•Fabrice, a boutique selling over-the-top, chunky costume jewelry•Karine Dupont, a young, fun designer of bags known primarily to insiders•J. C. Martinez, whose amazing collection of antique prints is as good as anything at the famous Paris flea market •Sabbia Rosa, a designer of gorgeous silk or satin lingerie who will make things to order

    The suppression of heresy became a pretext for a vicious war that remains largely unstudied as a military conflict. Laurence Marvin here examines the Albigensian Crusade as military and political history rather than religious history and traces these dimensions of the conflict through to Montfort's death in 1218. He shows how Montfort experienced military success in spite of a hostile populace, impossible military targets, armies that dissolved every forty days, and a pope who often failed to support the crusade morally or financially. He also discusses the supposed brutality of the war, why the inhabitants were for so long unsuccessful at defending themselves against it, and its impact on Occitania. This original account will appeal to scholars of medieval France, the Crusades and medieval military history.

    Much has been written about his rise to power, his time as leader of France, his ultimate defeat at Waterloo and his exile on St. Helena. But the short critical period of his fall from power, the few months in 1815 between Waterloo and his arrival on St. Helena, has received less attention. J. David Markham's gripping new study focuses on this, Napoleon's last journey, and the final dramatic episodes in his fateful life.

    This book traces for the first time in English the court’s evolution from a nomadic institution to a more sedentary one over the course of a century that began gloriously for France and ended in the horrors of civil war.  Robert Knecht, a renowned expert on Renaissance France, explores the political and cultural importance of the French court through seven reigns from Charles VIII to Henry III, including the tumultuous regency of Catherine de' Medici. Against a sharp precis of political events, he details the structure, daily activities, and festivals of the court. Sumptuously illustrated throughout, this is an enthralling account of an opulent and dynamic institution in which image and representation were key.

    James the Apostle preached throughout the Iberian peninsula. His bones found their way to the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela and today many pilgrims make trips to the shrine. This fully illustrated book covers all the routes to this holy place from Paris and Spain. Providing readers with historical context for the routes, it showcases all the stunning monuments and magnificent landscapes along the way.

    She had been running her business The French Table, which specialises in foodie tours around Paris, for nearly 10 years, but she was looking for a more permanent base to set up a cookery school. Finally she and her family came across a chateau in Normandy which was to become home. With a photographer following Jane for much of the time, we discover this lush and gorgeous corner of France with her. From regional markets and vignerons to antique fairs and three-Michelin star restaurants, Jane lets us into all aspects of her life in France. Most importantly, we see the chateau restored to its former glory, meet the local characters and discover the produce of Normandy at Jane's table - with 40 regional recipes.

    The posters—most of them never before published—feature barnstormers, gliders, and flying boats, the earliest passenger flights, the first luxury-liners, mail carriers, jets, and much more. Spanning a century and a half, they combine the popular art and the commerce of their eras, with both explored in the entertaining, informative text by a longstanding National Air and Space Museum curator. From 19th-century circus impresarios offering rides in gaudy hot-air balloons to the sleek 21st-century airliners, the posters provide a fascinating illustrated history of flight as it evolved from an exotic realm inhabited only by visionaries and daredevils into our modern world of speedy jets and frequent flyers—no longer extraordinary, perhaps, but still echoing with the exhilarating thrill and glamorous excitement captured here.Countless visitors to the museum’s traveling poster exhibition and the permanent exhibition "America by Air" will delight in the gorgeous and wonderful graphics collected in this appealing, affordable book—and so will aviation buffs, armchair travelers, and poster connoisseurs everywhere.

    The midday heat. A famous female movie star. A French star photographer. and a red bed. These are the ingredients for Cuba Libre, the erotic women's book of the season. Breathtakingly beauitful Emmanuelle Beart, who came to fame as the "Belle Noiseuse" in Jacques Rivette's multi-award-winning film of the same name, offers us an unparalleled series of highly erotic and intoxicatingly feminine nudes. Sylvie Lancrenon, photographer for Elle magazine in France, staged this daring performance adn captured it in compelling color photographs: Cuba Libre is in the most lascivious of terms sweet, sexy and stunning.

    It explores the points of convergence and the parallels in their development throughout their careers. Central to this is their response to photography and film, and to the challenges posed to fine art by the development of mass production. Duchamp’s paintings of 1911–12 were influenced by the representation of movement in photography, while Picabia’s were shaped in part by the belief that the advent of the camera spelled the end of traditional painting. Man Ray used photography first to record his own art works and those of others, but soon saw in it a means of creating images of a status and inventiveness traditionally restricted to fine art. And, as this fully illustrated book shows, humor and eroticism were themes common to the work of all three artists.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    Christmas arrives, with its snow and multitude of family and army presents. But the surprise won't come from inside the generous parcels which lie in the French, Scottish, and German trenches. That night, a momentous event will turn the destinies of four characters: an Anglican priest, a French lieutenant, an exceptional German tenor and the one he loves, a soprano and singing partner. During this Christmas Eve, the unthinkable happens: soldiers come out of their trenches, leaving their rifles behind to shake hands with the enemy."

    Watteau was inspired by the theater and in particular the commedia dell'arte, hence elaborately costumed actors, dancers, and musicians were recurrent subjects; he was also fond of bucolic scenes and portraiture. Infused with romance, drama, and joie de vivre, Watteau's paintings depict a idyllic world of pleasure and entertainment.Every book in "Taschen's Basic Art Series" features: a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist; approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions; and, a concise biography.

    These texts, including courtly lyrics, prose and verse romances, dits amoureux and plays, proved hugely influential for other European literary traditions in the medieval period and beyond. This Companion offers a wide-ranging and stimulating guide to literature composed in medieval French from its beginnings in the ninth century until the Renaissance. The essays are grounded in detailed analysis of canonical texts and authors such as the Chanson de Roland, the Roman de la Rose, Villon's Testament, Chr�tien de Troyes, Machaut, Christine de Pisan and the Tristan romances. Featuring a chronology and suggestions for further reading, this is the ideal companion for students and scholars in other fields wishing to discover the riches of the French medieval tradition.

    Includes walks through picturesque neighborhoods like the Latin Quarter and Montmartre. With day trips to Versailles, Chartres, and Disneyland-Paris.These attractively priced, four-color guides offer dozens of neighborhood and thematic tours, complete with hundreds of photos and bulleted maps that lead the way from sight to sight. Day by Days are the only guides that help travelers organize their time to get the most out of a trip.Full-color package at an affordable price Star ratings for all hotels, restaurants, and attractions Foldout front covers with maps and quick-reference information Tear-resistant map in a handy, reclosable plastic wallet Handy pocket-sized trim

    A companion volume to his acclaimed Luminous Debris, Ladder of Shadows picks up where the former left off: with late antiquity, covering a period from roughly the third to the thirteenth century. Here Sobin offers brilliant readings of late Roman and early Christian ruins in his adopted region of Provence, sifting through iconographic, architectural, and sacramental vestiges to shed light on nothing less than the existential itself.

    Now believed to be a combination of bubonic plague and two other rarer plague strains, the Black Death ravaged the continent for several terrible years before finally fading away in 1352. Most historians believe that the pandemic, which also swept across parts of Western Asia and North Africa, annihilated 33 to 60 percent of Europe's population - roughly 25 to 45 million men, women, and children. This massive depopulation had a deep impact on the course of European history, speeding up or initiating important social, economic, religious, and cultural changes.

    The blade was allowed to do its work well into our own time.  In 1974, Hamida Djandoubi brutally tortured 22 year-old Elisabeth Bousquet in an apartment in Marseille, putting cigarettes out on her body and lighting her on fire, finally strangling her to death in the Provencal countryside where he left her body to rot.  In 1977, he became the last person executed by guillotine in France in a multifaceted case as mesmerizing for its senseless violence as it is though-provoking for its depiction of a France both in love with and afraid of The Foreigner.  In a thrilling and enlightening account of a horrendous murder paired with the history of the guillotine and the history of capital punishment, Jeremy Mercer, a writer well known for his view of the underbelly of French life, considers the case of Hamida Djandoubi in the vast flow of blood that France's guillotine has produced.  In his hands, France never looked so bloody...

    He predicted the city of the future with its large, white apartment buildings in parklike settings—a move away from the turn-of-the-century industrial city, which he saw as too fussy and suffocating and believed should be torn down, including most of Paris. Irascible and caustic, tender and enthusiastic, more than a mercurial innovator, Le Corbusier was considered to be the very conscience of modern architecture.In this first biography of the man, Nicholas Fox Weber writes about Le Corbusier the precise, mathematical, practical-minded artist whose idealism—vibrant, poetic, imaginative; discipline; and sensualism were reflected in his iconic designs and pioneering theories of architecture and urban planning.Weber writes about Le Corbusier’s training; his coming to live and work in Paris; the ties he formed with Nehru . . . Brassaï . . . Malraux (he championed Le Corbusier’s work and commissioned a major new museum for art to be built on the outskirts of Paris) . . . Einstein . . . Matisse . . . the Steins . . . Picasso . . . Walter Gropius, and others.We see how Le Corbusier, who appreciated goverments only for the possibility of obtaining architectural commissions, was drawn to the new Soviet Union and extolled the merits of communism (he never joined the party); and in 1928, as the possible architect of a major new building, went to Moscow, where he was hailed by Trotsky and was received at the Kremlin. Le Corbusier praised the ideas of Mussolini and worked for two years under the Vichy government, hoping to oversee new construction and urbanism throughout France. Le Corbusier believed that Hitler and Vichy rule would bring about “a marvelous transformation of society,” then renounced the doomed regime and went to work for Charles de Gaulle and his provisional government.Weber writes about Le Corbusier’s fraught relationships with women (he remained celibate until the age of twenty-four and then often went to prostitutes); about his twenty-seven-year-long marriage to a woman who had no interest in architecture and forbade it being discussed at the dinner table; about his numerous love affairs during his marriage, including his shipboard romance with the twenty-three-year-old Josephine Baker, already a legend in Paris, whom he saw as a “pure and guileless soul.” She saw him as “irresistibly funny.” “What a shame you’re an architect!” she wrote. “You’d have made such a good partner!”A brilliant revelation of this single-minded, elusive genius, of his extraordinary achivements and the age in which he lived.From the Hardcover edition.

    Author Brian Strayer provides biographical sketches of its key leaders, analyzes their major writings, and highlights both the movement's internal conflicts and its struggles against Church and State persecution. From letters, diaries, books, and speeches, Strayer explains such important Jansenist themes as suffering, saintliness, truth, conflict, passive resistance, and their gradual embracing of toleration. He provides fresh insights into asceticism, Gallicanism, Richerism, Conciliarism, Jesuitism, and Convulsionism in their historical contexts. With gentle wit, the author exposes the contradictions and paradoxes within the movement, shares human interest stories about the Port-Royal nuns, and shows how papal bulls poisoned the religious and political life in France from 1643 to 1713 and beyond. Suffering Saints is the result of five years of research in primary and secondary sources from several major archives and libraries in Paris and the United States.

    - Each title features: - An overview of the city as it exists today, detailing population, culture, politics, and major attractions- A unique combination of cultural and literary history- Visitor information for many of the city's literary treasures- An introduction by Harold Bloom

    Diefendorf introduces students to the most notorious episode in France’s sixteenth century civil and religious wars and an event of lasting historical importance. The murder of thousands of French Protestants by Catholics in August 1572 influenced not only the subsequent course of France’s civil wars and state building, but also patterns of international alliance and long-standing cultural values across Europe. The book begins with an introduction that explores the political and religious context for the massacre and traces the course of the massacre and its aftermath. The featured documents offer a rich array of sources on the conflict—including royal edicts, popular songs, polemics, eyewitness accounts, memoirs, paintings, and engravings—to enable students to explore the massacre, the nature of church-state relations, the moral responsibility of secular and religious authorities, and the origins and consequences of religious persecution and intolerance in this period. Useful pedagogic aids include headnotes and gloss notes to the documents, a list of major figures, a chronology of key events, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and an index.