-- from "Returning to Reims"After his father dies, Didier Eribon returns to his hometown of Reims and rediscovers the working-class world he had left behind thirty years earlier. For years, Eribon had thought of his father largely in terms of the latter's intolerable homophobia. Yet his father's death provokes new reflection on Eribon's part about how multiple processes of domination intersect in a given life and in a given culture. Eribon sets out to investigate his past, the history of his family, and the trajectory of his own life. His story weaves together a set of remarkable reflections on the class system in France, on the role of the educational system in class identity, on the way both class and sexual identities are formed, and on the recent history of French politics, including the shifting voting patterns of the working classes -- reflected by Eribon's own family, which changed its allegiance from the Communist Party to the National Front."Returning to Reims" is a remarkable book of sociological inquiry and critical theory, of interest to anyone concerned with the direction of leftist politics in the contemporary world, and to anyone who has ever experienced how sexual identity can clash with other parts of one's identity. A huge success in France since its initial publication in 2009, "Returning to Reims" received enthusiastic reviews in "Le Monde, Liberation, L'Express, Les Inrockuptibles," and elsewhere.

    In France, a young woman succumbs to illness, leaving her husband and small children bereft. Present at both events, Emmanuel Carrère sets out to tell the story of two families—shattered and ultimately restored. What he accomplishes is nothing short of a literary miracle: a heartrending narrative of endless love, a meditation on courage and decency in the face of adversity, an intimate and reverent look at the extraordinary beauty and nobility of ordinary lives.Precise, sober, and suspenseful, as full of twists and turns as any novel, Lives Other Than My Own confronts terrifying catastrophes to illuminate the astonishing richness of human connection: a grandfather who thought he had found paradise—too soon—and now devotes himself to helping his neighbors rebuild their village; a husband so in love with his ailing wife that he carries her in his arms like a knight does his princess; and finally, Carrère himself, longtime chronicler of the tormented self, who unexpectedly finds consolation and even joy as he immerses himself in the lives of others.

    The author describes how, with no French language ability, he approached recruiters for the French Foreign Legion in Paris and the demanding selection process that followed. When he was accepted, he and other prospective legionnaires were sent to Southern France to begin the harsh recruit training course. The mix of different nationalities and backgrounds among his fellows was enormous. New members are traditionally allowed to change their identities - the author chose to alter his age becoming 28 not 38! Elite paratrooper training followed in Corsica before the author earned his 'wings'.The FFL is never far from the front line and we read of challenging active service in former French colonies in Africa as well as during the First Gulf War, evicting Saddam Hussein from Kuwait and operations in Bosnia and Sarajevo.This is a completely authentic book that lifts the veil of mystery and myth and reveals much about the realities of service in the Foreign Legion. The author is not given to exaggeration - there is no need for it. A gripping read.

    Taking notes on index cards as was his habit, he reflected on a new solitude, on the ebb and flow of sadness, and on modern society's dismissal of grief. These 330 cards, published here for the first time, prove a skeleton key to the themes he tackled throughout his work. Behind the unflagging mind, "the most consistently intelligent, important, and useful literary critic to have emerged anywhere" (Susan Sontag), lay a deeply sensitive man who cherished his mother with a devotion unknown even to his closest friends.

    Now, taking advantage of never- before-seen documents from the Russian archives, Lieven upends much of the conventional wisdom about the events that formed the backdrop of Tolstoy's masterpiece, War & Peace. Lieven's riveting narrative sweeps readers thru epic battles, tense diplomatic exchanges on which the fate of nations hung & the rise of Russia from near-ruin to Europe's liberator. Rich in detail, Russia Against Napoleon is a groundbreaking masterwork.

    Petersburg after twenty years of exile in Paris, hoping to recapture his youth. Instead, he meets Volsky, an old man who tells him his extraordinary story: of surviving the siege of Leningrad, the march on Berlin, and Stalin's purges, and of a transcendent love affair. Volsky's life is an inspiration to Shutov -- because for all that he suffered, he knew great happiness. This depth of feeling stands in sharp contrast to the empty lives Shutov encounters in the new Russia, and to his own life, that of just another unknown man . . .

    

    The Patagonian Hare is the story of a man who has searched at every moment for existential adventure, who has committed himself deeply to what he believes in, and who has made his life a battle.The Patagonian Hare, a number-one bestseller in France, has been translated into Spanish, German, Italian, Hebrew, Polish, Dutch, and Portuguese. Claude Lanzmann's brilliant memoir has been widely acclaimed as a masterpiece, was hailed as "a true literary and historic event" in the pages of Le Monde, and was awarded the prestigious Welt-Literaturpreis in Germany.

    When Shira’s father is arrested by the local baron intent on enforcing the Catholic Church’s strictures against heresy, Shira fights for his release and encounters two men who will influence her life profoundly—an inspiring Catholic priest and Meir ben Baruch, a brilliant scholar. In Meir, Shira finds her soulmate.Married to Meir in Paris, Shira blossoms as a wife and mother, savoring the intellectual and social challenges that come with being the wife of a prominent scholar. After witnessing the burning of every copy of the Talmud in Paris, Shira and her family seek refuge in Germany. Yet even there they experience bloody pogroms and intensifying anti-Semitism. With no safe place for Jews in Europe, they set out for Israel only to see Meir captured and imprisoned by Rudolph I of Hapsburg. As Shira weathers heartbreak and works to find a middle ground between two warring religions, she shows her children and grandchildren how to embrace the joys of life, both secular and religious.A multi-generational novel that vividly brings to life a period rarely covered in historical fiction.

    . . but all too well. Confidante of Nostradamus, scheming mother-in-law to Mary, Queen of Scots, and architect of the bloody St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Catherine de Medici is one of the most maligned monarchs in history. In her latest historical fiction, Jeanne Kalogridis tells Catherine’s story—that of a tender young girl, destined to be a pawn in Machiavellian games. Born into one of Florence’s most powerful families, Catherine was soon left a fabulously rich heiress by the early deaths of her parents. Violent conflict rent the city state and she found herself imprisoned and threatened by her family’s enemies before finally being released and married off to the handsome Prince Henry of France. Overshadowed by her husband’s mistress, the gorgeous, conniving Diane de Poitiers, and unable to bear children, Catherine resorted to the dark arts of sorcery to win Henry’s love and enhance her fertility—for which she would pay a price. Against the lavish and decadent backdrop of the French court, and Catherine’s blood-soaked visions of the future, Kalogridis reveals the great love and desire Catherine bore for her husband, Henry, and her stark determination to keep her sons on the throne.

    Who better than Michel Roux to provide the ultimate guide to sauce-making? Over 200 recipes clearly explain the techniques.

    Yet he is still alone and - in a moment of rare self-knowledge - decides that the only way to find the girl of his dreams is to stop looking for her. Yet barely a week after coming to this momentous decision, an email from an old school friend re-introduces him to Alice - a paid-up city girl who speaks only three words of French and comes with an expensive shoe habit and a deep-rooted mistrust of the countryside. Even worse, she lives and works on the far side of the Atlantic, in Baltimore, USA.And so begins an unlikely romance, conducted across two continents, as Michael the rustic hermit struggles to unlearn his lessons in living alone and contemplates the alarming prospect of sharing his French life (not to mention his aeroplane) with someone else...

    Hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen and women carried out an armed struggle against the Nazis, producing underground anti-fascist publications and supplying the Allies with vital intelligence. Based on hundreds of French eye-witness accounts and including recently-released archival material, The Resistance uses dramatic personal stories to take the reader on one of the great adventures of the 20th century. The tale begins with the catastrophic Fall of France in 1940, and shatters the myth of a unified Resistance created by General de Gaulle. In fact, De Gaulle never understood the Resistance, and sought to use, dominate and channel it to his own ends. Brave men and women set up organisations, only to be betrayed or hunted down by the Nazis, and to die in front of the firing squad or in the concentration camps. Over time, the true story of the Resistance got blurred and distorted, its heroes and conflicts were forgotten as the movement became a myth. By turns exciting, tragic and insightful, The Resistance reveals how one of the most powerful modern myths came to be forged and provides a gripping account of one of the most striking events in the 20th century.

    For more than two years, from the summer of 1940 through November of 1942, British forces engaged the Vichy French on land, sea and air. Thousands of lives were lost, and the history of this conflict was buried—until now. Through painstaking historical research, historian Colin Smith throws back the veil of secrecy to detail this last bloody conflict between modern Europe’s great powers.

    Watch the drama unfold through the eyes of the characters in this book.

    Then, unique to this edition is a portion of the original edition rarely seen, describing the saint’s final days as seen through the eyes of the Sisters of the Lisieux Carmel; plus a poignant collection of over seventy firsthand anecdotes about Thérèse recounted by the Sisters following her death.  Also included a comprehensive selection of prayers, letters, and poems written by Therese, and in both French and English, the poem that inspired her to call herself the “Little Flower.” Further appendices give important dates for her life, taking the reader up to 1997, one hundred years after her death, when Pope John Paul II declared her to be a Doctor of the Church. Beautiful engravings and photographs throughout the book give the reader a view of the Little Flower’s childhood home and family, her growing-up years, life at Carmel, her death, and the original gravesite. Millions of hearts have been touched by St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s desire, not to be mighty and great, but to be a humble, little flower that would gladden God’s eyes as he glances down at his feet. Now, yours will be, too.

    In 'French Essence', Vicki again shares her insider's view of life in Provence, revealing the secrets of how she immersed herself & her home in French customs.

    He continues this wonderful work with two plays from Pierre Corneille: Le Cid is Corneille’s most famous play, a tragedy set in Seville that illuminates the dangers of being bound by honor and the limits of romantic love; The Liar is a farce, set in France and dealing with love, misperceptions, and downright falsifications, which ends, of course, happily ever after. These two plays, together in one volume, work in perfect tandem to showcase the breadth of Corneille’s abilities. Taking us back to the time he portrays as well as the time of his greatest success as a playwright, they remind us that the delights to be found on the French stage are truly ageless.

    When violence erupts on the streets of Paris in May 1968, a hapless international film crew finds itself stranded during the shooting of a preposterous low-budget blue movie about notorious 18th century erotic poet John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester. A deadpan and digressive behind-the-scenes catalog of the actors, filmmakers, bystanders, and subjects involved in this movie, ROSE ALLEY is also a fantastical and venomous love letter to French film and literature, obsessive collectors, pornography, language, revolution, misanthropy, the joys of cross-cultural misunderstanding, and other peculiar objects of affection. As Harry Mathews writes, "you have no excuse not to read this book."

    Featuring an introduction by the 110-year-old Henry Allingham—the only living survivor of the Battle of the Somme—this new anthology will contain interviews with the families of World War I veterans as well those still alive from the British, German, French, Russian, and other armies. These men have left their mark on history, and their personal stories are deeply moving. A concluding chapter places the “Great War” in context.

    Desserts include Baklawa, Crepes Suzette, and Fig Loukoumades. Demystifying unfamiliar cuisines, this book offers stories and traditions related to each cuisine, helps readers shop for the key ingredients and cooking implements, and includes simple recipes from cultures as far flung as Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and South America. Soon readers will be experts at making Dolma from Turkey, Bulgogi from Korea, and Black Forest Cake from Germany.

    In this enchanting book, presented in a slipcase made to resemble a battered steamer trunk, these legendary ships—The Normandie, The Mauretania, and The Majestic —are gloriously resurrected through photographs, posters, watercolors, advertising art, memorabilia, and more.  First Class: Legendary Ocean Liner Voyages Around the World leads readers on an illustrated tour of these great liners, from glamorous dining rooms and gleaming table services to elaborate staterooms and exquisite salons. Divided into six fantastic journeys, First Class is an unparalleled celebration of the elegance, sophistication, and comfort of a bygone era in ocean travel.    “First Class: Legendary Ocean Liner Voyages Around the World engaged me from the get-go, its slender landscape-oriented format, as sleek and elegant as an ocean liner. Gérard Piouffre’s masterful blend of photographs, history, and ocean liner lore effortlessly transported me—an unabashed sentimentalist—right back to the nostalgic heyday of ocean liner travel. Would that it were possible to book passage on each of the voyages mapped out.”~ Stephen Lash, Chairman of Christie’s, North and South America and founder of the Ocean Liner Museum“Conjuring a leisurely world of ocean travel unhaunted by icebergs or any other perils of the deep.” ~ Stephen Heyman, The Moment/NYT“(Gérard Piouffre) provides a beautiful overview of historic vessels that once journeyed across our oceans.” ~ Elodie Noulin-Merat, Metro “It’s a book that makes a terrific holiday gift for anyone who loves boats, cruises, history . . . .” Alison Wellner, Luxist“Fascinating.” ~ The Perceptive Travel Blog “A trawl through First Class makes one yearn for an era when getting there, as the slogan had it, was half the fun.” ~ The Globe and Mail: Books

    What does it mean to fall asleep? Might there exist something like a reason of sleep, a reason at work in its own form or modality, a modality of being in oneself, of return to oneself, without the waking self that distinguishes I from you and from the world? What reason might exist in that absence of ego, appearance, and intention, in an abandon thanks to which one is emptied out into a non-place shared by everyone?Sleep attests to something like an equality of all that exists in the rhythm of the world. With sleep, victory is constantly renewed over the fear of night, an a confidence that we will wake with the return of day, in a return to self, to us--though to a self, an us, that is each day different, unforeseen, without any warning given in advance.To seek anew the meaning stirring in the supposed loss of meaning, of consciousness, and of control that occurs in sleep is not to reclaim some meaning already familiar in philosophy, religion, progressivism, or any other -ism. It is instead to open anew a source that is not the source of a meaning but that makes up the nature proper to meaning, its truth: opening, gushing forth, infinity.This beautiful, profound meditation on sleep is a unique work in the history of phenomenology--a lyrical phenomenology of what can have no phenomenology, since sleep shows itself to the waking observer, the subject of phenomenology, only as disappearance and concealment.

    Impossible Engineering takes an insightful and entertaining look at the mystery of its success as well as the canal's surprising political significance. The waterway was a marvel that connected modern state power to human control of nature just as surely as it linked the ocean to the sea.The Canal du Midi is typically characterized as the achievement of Pierre-Paul Riquet, a tax farmer and entrepreneur for the canal. Yet Chandra Mukerji argues that it was a product of collective intelligence, depending on peasant women and artisans--unrecognized heirs to Roman traditions of engineering--who came to labor on the waterway in collaboration with military and academic supervisors. Ironically, while Louis XIV and his treasury minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert used propaganda to present France as a new Rome, the Canal du Midi was being constructed with unrecognized classical methods. Still, the result was politically potent. As Mukerji shows, the project took land and power from local nobles, using water itself as a silent agent of the state to disrupt traditions of local life that had served regional elites.Impossible Engineering opens a surprising window into the world of seventeenth-century France and illuminates a singular work of engineering undertaken to empower the state through technical conquest of nature.

    Showcasing the variety of images from his personal collection, the postcards create an enduring time capsule, one that reveals a Paris that no longer exists.The invention of the postcard in the 19th century revolutionized communication and created the original social networking tool: At the height of their popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, France was producing a million postcards a day, and collecting became a craze that spread around the world.The postcards here reveal the true artwork of the original medium, from hand-tinting techniques to nostalgic details too small to see with the naked eye: Sandwich-board men asleep on park benches, a cheese vendor eyeing a woman passerby. The messages penned to loved ones back home are perhaps the most delightful gems: “Bringing your wife to Paris is like bringing a meal to a banquet,” quips one traveler.In its colorful entirety, Paris Postcards offers an addictively voyeuristic slice of the American experience of Paris in the early 20th century.

    While he was there he indulged his other great interest - military matters. On his travels he observed first-hand the soldiers of the European Armies in the last days of the colourful and elaborate uniforms that were giving way to grey and khaki across the continent. Realizing that this was a great military heritage that was slipping away, he set out to record these splendid uniforms.In the uncertain days before the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Haswell Miller sketched and painted hundreds of figures, each wearing a different uniform from the armies of Britain, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Spain and Sweden. Just before the First World War the paintings were exhibited in Leipzig, and it seemed they might be published. But when war broke out they returned home and lay forgotten for nearly one hundred years.Now, published together at last, they represent a unique record of the uniforms of the last great age of military dress. Accompanied by, in Haswell Miller's own words, 'notes and memories of the days before "the lights went out in Europe" in the year 1914', this is a book of great historical importance.

    Home life, formerly characterized by stiff formality, was revolutionized by the simultaneous introduction of the sofa (a radical invitation to recline or converse), the original living rooms, and the very concept of private bedrooms and bathrooms, with far-reaching effects on the way people lived and related to one another. DeJean highlights the revolutionary ideas-and the bold personalities behind them-that fomented change in the home and beyond, providing new insight into the household habits and creature comforts we often take for granted.

    This groundbreaking book, which draws on the collections of Yale University, traces the relationship that Picasso had with literature and writing in his life and work.Beginning with the artist’s early associations with such writers as Gertrude Stein, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and Pierre Reverdy, the book continues until the postwar period, by which time Picasso had become a worldwide celebrity. Distinguished authorities in art and literature explore the theme of Picasso and language from historical, linguistic, and visual perspectives and contextualize Picasso’s work within a rich literary framework. Presenting fascinating archival materials and written in an accessible style, Picasso and the Allure of Language is essential reading for anyone interested in this great artist and the history of modernism.

    This book presents the most significant influences on this style, the stages in its evolution and the personalities who put their stamp on it, such as the painters Manet, Monet, Renoir and Degas. Furthermore, the text spotlights the impact of Impressionism on trends in art outside of France. A separate chapter is devoted to the women artists of the time, who are increasingly attracting the interest of art historians and art lovers. Special chapters about the music, literature and photography of the period turn this book into a comprehensive survey of the art and culture of this era.

    It is an adaptation of the author's best seller, "Akfadou, Un An avec le Colonel Amirouche", published in French in 2009 by Casbah Editions, Algiers. Although these memoirs target the public at large, academics, students of history and Islamist ideology, of asymmetric, psychological, and guerrilla warfare, as well as political sociologists will find it valuable. When the author was seven years old, he saw his father, a nationalist activist, savagely beaten and incarcerated by French troops. A burning hatred of colonialism and the French, sparked by that appalling incident, ignited his first flickers of political awareness. The book combines a harrowing personal narrative with history, politics, and ethnography. It briefly addresses the turmoil of prewar nationalist activism before relating the tragic though exhilarating war events he lived or witnessed as a guerrilla fighter. Sent by the Revolutionary Provisional Government to the US, one month before the end of the war, he describes with a broken heart Algeria's bittersweet independence accompanied by violence unleashed by the race to take power. Attending Georgetown, Wesleyan and Colorado Universities, he analyses an arduous cultural adjustment and the discovery that the quality of leadership, and not natural wealth, constitutes the decisive factor in a country's greatness. Looking back with dismay at Algeria’s missed opportunities since 1962, the work devotes a portion of the epilogue to a revolution hijacked by non-revolutionaries who led the country into a new Algerian war, prompting the inescapable questions: What went wrong? Has a different episode of violence dawned in Algeria, or did the previous one never end?

    In the late 1980s, he asked his mother to tell him the story of his family's flight from the German invasion of Belgium and the Nazi policies that would become the Holocaust. Later, his two older brothers added their memories. But this story is not simply an account of the years spent one step ahead of Hitler. It is about a little boy then grown man coming to know his own story and realizing the tenuousness of memory. Most of the Grosses' flight takes place in France during its defeat and collaboration with the Nazis, rounding up more than 75,000 Jews for deportation to the death camps. Gross and his family made it through these anguished years because of their fortitude and ingenuity and the help of brave men and women of other faiths, reverently referred to as The Righteous Among the Nations, who risked their lives standing up to their collaborationist government. One Step Ahead of Hitler is a story of survival told in words and in photographs of a journey beginning in Antwerp and ending with his freedom in America. "It is an important memoir," David P. Gushee, Distinguished Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University and author of Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, writes in the foreword. "Some of the most shameful moments of German, French, Swiss-and human-history are recorded here, not for the first time, but in a deeply personal way by someone who experienced their effects as a small child."

    Provence Sketchbook takes the reader through this historically rich region that also boasts some of France's most breathtaking landscapes.

    The conduct of the intense, fast-moving campaign that followed has been widely hailed as one of his greatest feats as a commander, yet it has rarely been described fully and objectively. Andrew Uffindell, in this gripping and original study, reconstructs the campaign, reassesses Napoleon's military leadership and provides a masterly account of a campaign that helped shape modern Europe.

    Every map or view includes the original printing information on the back and is accompanied by brief text that places the image in its historic context and further illuminates its qualities. In addition, Sinclair provides a thoughtful introduction to the collection of images. Printed on high-quality matte paper and exquisitely reproduced, these images are perfect for display in any home, office, library, dorm room, or classroom.

    This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

    Over forty years from 1066, England was traumatised and transformed. The Anglo-Saxon ruling class was eliminated, foreign elites took control of Church and State, and England's entire political, social and cultural orientation was changed. Out of the upheaval which followed the Battle of Hastings, a new kind of Englishness emerged and the priorities of England's new rulers set the kingdom on the political course it was to follow for the rest of the Middle Ages. However, the Norman Conquest was more than a purely English phenomenon, for Wales, Scotland and Normandy were all deeply affected by it too. This book's broad sweep successfully encompasses these wider British and French perspectives to offer a fresh, clear and concise introduction to the events which propelled the two nations into the Middle Ages and dramatically altered the course of history.

    From Truffaut and Godard to Hanks and Hepburn, Paris has been a magnet for filmmakers and movie stars, whose careers don't seem complete unless they've made at least one film in the world's most romantic location. Now see it from a whole new angle through the lenses of famous directors. Four walks take you past all of Paris's famous sites while telling which stars walked these same streets before you and where they paused to kiss or kill. Four more explore hidden nooks that tourists often overlook, and two offer a taste of the Old Paris of '30s and '40s film classics. In addition, a Further Afield chapter features locations that allow you to explore some of Paris's flea markets, green spaces, suburbs, and other areas of interest to visitors and moviemakers. Along the way, the author provides commentary to enrich your appreciation of what you're seeing as you sip a glass of wine or enjoy a coffee at a sidewalk cafe. Each walk starts and ends at a Metro stop for easy access from wherever you may be staying in the City of Light. Maps make it easy to follow the routes, and a film index guides you to the locations used in 160 films, ranging from The Bourne Identity, The Da Vinci Code, and The Devil Wears Prada to oldies but goodies like Charade and Sabrina and such French New Wave classics as Breathless and The 400 Blows. A fresh, fun, low-cost way to explore Paris-for the first time or the fiftieth.

    Drawing on in-depth interviews with economists, institutional analysis, and a wealth of scholarly evidence, Marion Fourcade traces the history of economics in each country from the late nineteenth century to the present, demonstrating how each political, cultural, and institutional context gave rise to a distinct professional and disciplinary configuration. She argues that because the substance of political life varied from country to country, people's experience and understanding of the economy, and their political and intellectual battles over it, crystallized in different ways--through scientific and mercantile professionalism in the United States, public-minded elitism in Britain, and statist divisions in France. Fourcade moves past old debates about the relationship between culture and institutions in the production of expert knowledge to show that scientific and practical claims over the economy in these three societies arose from different elites with different intellectual orientations, institutional entanglements, and social purposes.Much more than a history of the economics profession, Economists and Societies is a revealing exploration of American, French, and British society and culture as seen through the lens of their respective economic institutions and the distinctive character of their economic experts.

    Drawing on his earlier work on the explanation of social behavior, Elster argues that Tocqueville's main claim to our attention today rests on the large number of exportable causal mechanisms to be found in his work, many of which are still worthy of further exploration. Elster proposes a novel reading of Democracy in America in which the key explanatory variable is the rapid economic and political turnover rather than equality of wealth at any given point in time. He also offers a reading of The Ancien R�gime and the Revolution as grounded in the psychological relations among the peasantry, the bourgeoisie, and the nobility. Consistently going beyond exegetical commentary, he argues that Tocqueville is eminently worth reading today for his substantive and methodological insights.

    This catalogue of over three hundred artworks related to the Saisons Russes between 1909 and 1929 is the official companion to an exhibition in Monte Carlo. The legendary productions are brought to life through stage designs, costumes, paintings, sculptures, photographs, and programs. The artwork comes from a wide variety of public and private collections, including the Fokine collection in the St. Petersburg Theatre Museum. Diaghilev’s scenic achievements are complemented by a number of contextual paintings, drawings, and other artifacts, which help to define Russia’s cultural renaissance of the first decades of the twentieth century. The documentary section of the catalog contains rich archival material, including letters, photographs, choreographic notes, and memoirs, many published here for the first time.

    In the eighteenth century their power seemed better entrenched than ever. But in 1790 the French revolutionaries made a determined attempt to abolish nobility entirely. Aristocracy became the term for everything they were against, and the nobility of France, so recently the most dazzling and sophisticated elite in the European world, found itself persecuted in ways that horrified counterparts in other countries.Aristocracy and its Enemies traces the roots of the attack on nobility at this time, looking at intellectual developments over the preceding centuries, in particular the impact of the American Revolution. It traces the steps by which French nobles were disempowered and persecuted, a period during which large numbers fled the country and many perished or were imprisoned.In the end abolition of the aristocracy proved impossible, and nobles recovered much of their property. Napoleon set out to reconcile the remnants of the old nobility to the consequences of revolution, and created a titled elite of his own. After his fall the restored Bourbons offered renewed recognition to all forms of nobility. But nineteenth century French nobles were a group transformed and traumatized by the revolutionary experience, and they never recovered their old hegemony and privileges. As William Doyle shows, if the revolutionaries failed in their attempt to abolish nobility, they nevertheless began the longer term process of aristocratic decline that has marked the last two centuries.

    Reed Darmon has created a beautiful and inspiring collection of vintage French design from the past century. The hundreds of images packed into this delightfully compact book include movie, caf, and travel posters, book and magazine covers, advertisements, music albums, household product packaging, fashion items, toys, and other colorful and irresistible ephemera. A stylish object and graphic essay in one, Made in France is an extraordinary glimpse into the heart of French popular culture. Trs chic!

    This sumptuous book is a celebration of the iconic designer's lifetime in fashion. Included are photographs from 80 seasonal collections spanning 40 years and interlaced with remarkable personal anecdotes and reminiscences alongside candid photos of the designer by acclaimed photographers Dominique Issermann and Sarah Moon. Also included are images from the official campaigns that originally appeared in such leading fashion publications as Vogure, Elle, Marie-Claire, and many others.Though designing since 1962, Sonia Rykiel achieved instant acclaim when she founded her own label in 1968. She is celebrated for creating several transformative decorative features that transformed knitwear into fashion. These include inside-out stitching, no-hem and “unlined” pieces, bold stripes, lace, rhinestones and sweaters with written messages. She is also known for several signature looks including long clinging sweaters, small cropped pullovers, large rolled-back cuffs, and long shawls usually in a spectrum of key colors (beige, grey, dark blue and charcoal). These looks all reflected her philosophy of la démode, or “un-fashion” which abolished total-look diktats in favor of a wardrobe adapted to expressing a woman's individual personality

    Like many of his colleagues, Cuvier opposed evolution and yet, as a scientist, he could not ignore the evidence of past extinctions. Thus, he proposed that the history of the earth was characterized by a series of major calamities which had wiped out almost all creatures on the earth. The latest of these disasters occurred a few thousand years ago.The Discourse on the Revolutionary Upheavals was originally the introduction to an important book on quadruped fossils, but its popularity soon led to its being printed and translated as a separate volume. In it Cuvier sets down an argument for his views on the history the earth, a position that has come to be known as Catastrophism.However, the Discourse is more than a fascinating picture of the state of natural science in the years before Darwin’s work, for it offers an enormously wide-ranging exploration of what we can learn about the history of human society from mythology, astrology, astronomy, and literature from all of the world’s cultures to which Cuvier had access.Ian Johnston’s fluent new translation of this landmark in the history of science also includes Cuvier’s essay On the Ibis, in which Cuvier resolves a long dispute about the identity of this ancient bird.

    Covering all the best areas from the magnificent walls of Ceuse in the north to the impeccable climbing playground of Buoux to the south, this book has a lifetime's worth of climbing waiting on its pages.

    Now, in Conquest, she tells the equally remarkable, but largely forgotten, story of the dramatic years when England ruled France at the point of a sword.Henry V’s second invasion of France in 1417 launched a campaign that would put the crown of France on an English head. Buoyed by victory, his conquest looked unstoppable. By the time of his premature death in 1422, almost all of northern France was in his hands. The Valois heir to the throne had been disinherited and it was Henry’s infant son who became the first English king of France.Only the miraculous appearance of a visionary peasant girl – Joan of Arc – would halt the English advance. Yet despite her victories, her influence was short-lived: Henry VI had his coronation in Paris six months after her death and his kingdom endured for another twenty years. When he came of age he was not the leader his father had been. It was the dauphin, whom Joan had crowned Charles VII, who would finally drive the English out of France.Conquest brings to life these stirring times – the epic battles and sieges, plots and betrayals – through a kaleidoscope of characters from John Talbot, the ‘English Achilles’, and John, duke of Bedford, regent of France, to brutal mercenaries, opportunistic freebooters, resourceful spies and tragic lovers torn apart by the conflict.Supremely evocative and readable, Conquest is narrative history at its most colourful and compelling – the true story of those who fought for an English kingdom of France.

    Between 1779 and 1783 a small British force defended the Rock against the Spanish and the French who were determined take this strategically vital point guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean. The tenacity and endurance shown by the attackers and defenders alike, and the sheer ingenuity of the siege operations mounted by both sides, make the episode an epic of military history, and the story gives us a fascinating insight into the realities of siege warfare. In this, the first full study of the siege for over 40 years, James Falkner draws on a wide range of contemporary sources to tell the exciting tale of a huge and complex operation.REVIEWS ..".the first full study of the siege in over 40 years, drawing on accounts written by British soldiers who took an active part in the operations and on later studies."Book News does a wonderful job in describing a portion of that history during the Napoleonic Wars uses a number of contemporary sources to tell the story of the Rock, including not only military and naval but civilian as well; they suffered as much, if not more, than the soldiers and performed their part in its defense an important addition to the literature of the Napoleonic Era Past in Review Weekly"

    But one day he mistakenly leaves his bag of paints in the dance studio and instead takes a young ballerina’s bag, which contains her new tutu for the evening’s recital! And so the ballerina begins a great chase to find Degas before her big night. As she searches the streets of Paris, the ballerina encounters many other Impressionist painters, who are in the process of painting some of their great works. Monet, Renoir, Caillebotte, and Cassatt help the ballerina until she is reunited, at last, with Degas. Featuring the original Impressionist paintings that inspired this picture book of historical fiction, along with an author’s note about Impressionism and this vibrant period in Paris, Chasing Degas will delight young lovers of art and ballet.

    Weygand's highly accessible anthropological and cultural history introduces us to both real and imaginary figures from the past, uncovering French attitudes towards the blind from the Middle Ages through the first half of the nineteenth century. Much of the book, however, centers on the eighteenth century, the enlightened age of Diderot's emblematic blind man and of the Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, founded by Valentin Haüy, the great benefactor of blind people.Weygand paints a moving picture of the blind admitted to the institutions created for them and of the conditions under which they lived, from the officially-sanctioned beggars of the medieval Quinze-Vingts to the cloth makers of the Institute for Blind Workers. She has also uncovered their fictional counterparts in an impressive array of poems, plays, and novels.The book concludes with Braille, whose invention of writing with raised dots gave blind people around the world definitive access to silent reading and to written communication.

    He also provides recipes for classic French dishes such as Tarte Tatin and Duck-leg Confit. Lavishly illustrated, this is the book you'll want for planning and dreaming en route to the most romantic city in the world.

    With imaginative twists and turns, the author has crafted a novel of romance and deception. Set primarily in Paris and Southern California, this captivating tale includes aging members of the French Resistance, the mysteries surrounding an ancient Corsican game that can turn deadly, and two people―the American writer, Anna, and her unrequited love, the dashing Dr. Charles-Christian Gerard―whose history and exploits drive this novel. Against the backdrop of the tragic death of Princess Diana, we follow one year in the life of Anna as she attempts to piece together the past and understand how love could so quickly die. Between intrigue, murder, and what could be the greatest cover-up in modern history, she learns some painful and very frightening truths. In the process, she discovers her own history. The Seven Turns of the Snail's Shell was awarded Honorable Mention in Fiction at the 2010 Paris Book Festival.

    After an introduction to the many views of Edward's life, and a reinterpretation of the development of his cult, the volume considers his childhood in England and its influence upon his later life; the time he spent in Normandy and the relationships that developed there; and his later life, including an examination of the role played by Edith, his queen. There is also a particular focus upon Westminster Abbey, and the major new discoveries which have recently been made there. Incorporating both broad surveys and the fruits of detailed new work, this book will be essential reading for all those interested in late Saxon and Norman England. CONTRIBUTORS: RICHARD MORTIMER, SIMON KEYNES, ELISABETH VAN HOUTS, STEPHEN BAXTER, PAULINE STAFFORD, ERIC FERNIE, WARWICK RODWELL, RICHARD GEM, EDINA BOZOKY

    Dorland begins with a discussion of the liberation of concentration camp survivors, their stay in deportation camps, and eventual return to France, analyzing the circulation of mainly medical (neuropsychiatric) knowledge, its struggles to establish a symptomology of camp effects, and its broadening out into connected medical fields such as psychoanalysis. He then turns specifically to the French medical doctors who studied Holocaust survivors, and he investigates somatic, psychological, and holistic conceptions of survivors as patients and human beings. The final third of the book offers a comparative look at the “psy-science” approach to Holocaust survival beyond France, particularly in the United States and Israel. He illuminates the peculiar journey of a medical discourse that began in France but took on new forms elsewhere, eventually expanding into nonmedical fields to create the basis of the “traumato-culture” with which we are familiar today. Embedding his analysis of different medical discourses in the sociopolitical history of France in the twentieth century, he also looks at the French Jewish Question as it affected French medicine, the effects of five years of Nazi Occupation, France’s enthusiastic collaboration, and the problems this would pose for postwar collective memory.