Clementine in the Kitchen


Samuel V. Chamberlain - 1943
    Collects French recipes for everyday dishes and gourmet meals prepared by Clementine, a Burgundian cook for the Chamberlain family living first in post-World War II France, then in Massachusetts.

The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle


Charles de Gaulle - 1964
    The first section, "The Call to Honor", recounts the confusion and despair triggered by Hitler's blitzkrieg takeover of France. The second section, "Unity" describes de Gaulle's struggles to rally the Free French in Africa and in underground movements throughout Europe, his bitter conflict with the Vichy puppet regime ruling occupied France, and his cooperation with the Allied powers. "Salvation", the final installment, chronicles the turning of the tide of war against Nazi Germany, de Gaulle's triumphant return to France, and the reincarnation of the French Republic as a major international presence.

Selected Letters


Marie de Rabutin-Chantal de Sévigné - 1725
    A significant figure in French society and literary circles, whose close friends included Madame de La Fayette and La Rochefoucauld, she reflected on both significant historical events and personal issues, and in this selection of the most significant letters, spanning almost fifty years, she is by turns humorous and melancholic, profound and superficial. Whether describing the new plays of Racine and Moliere, speculating on court scandals including the intrigues of the King's mistresses or relating her own family concerns, Madame de Sevigne provides throughout an intriguing portrait of the lost age of Le Roi Soleil.

My Father's Fortune


Michael Frayn - 2010
    In this book he sets out to rediscover that lost land before all trace of it finally disappears beyond recall. As he tries to see it through the eyes his parents and the others who shaped his life, he comes to realise how little he ever knew or understood about them.This is above all the story of his father, the quick-witted boy from a poor and struggling family, who overcame so many disadvantages and shouldered so many burdens to make a go of his life; who found happiness, had it snatched away from him in a single instant, and in the end, after many difficulties, perhaps found it again.Father and son were in some odd ways ridiculously alike, in others ridiculously different; and the journey back down the corridors of time is sometimes comic, sometimes painful, as Michael Frayn comes to see how much he has inherited from his father - and makes one or two surprising discoveries about both of them along the way . . .

The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries, 1939 - 1955


John Colville - 1985
    An intimate and unvarnished view of Winston Churchill at his best.

The Memoirs


Hector Berlioz - 1870
    He tells the story of his liaison with Harriet Smithson, and his even more passionate affairs of the mind with Shakespeare, Scott, and Byron. Familiar with all the great figures of the age, Berlioz paints brilliant portraits of Liszt, Wagner, Balzac, Weber, and Rossini, among others. And through Berlioz's intimate and detailed self-revelation, there emerges a profoundly sympathetic and attractive man, driven, finally, by his overwhelming creative urges to a position of lonely eminence.For this new Everyman's edition of The Memoirs, the translator--the composer's most admired biographer--has completely revised the text and the extensive notes to take into account the latest research.(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed)

A Boy at the Hogarth Press


Richard Kennedy - 1972
    At sixteen, having failed to achieve an adequate academic standard, he left and went to work at the Hogarth Press.After he left the Hogarth Press he took a journalists' course at University College, London, and subsequently he went to the Regent Street Polytechnic where he worked industriously as an art student for two years. In the years preceding the war he worked in an advertising agency. He married Olive Johnstone whom he had met at University College and has three children.During the war Richard Kennedy served in the RAF ground staff and rose to the rank of Corporal. Since then he has occupied himself in illustrating children's books, which are known to children throughout the world. He has also written A Parcel of Time, a record of his life before he joined the Hogarth Press.

In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh's Didascalicon


Ivan Illich - 1991
    Victor, Illich celebrates the culture of the book from the twelfth century to the present. Hugh's work, at once an encyclopedia and guide to the art of reading, reveals a twelfth-century revolution as sweeping as that brought about by the invention of the printing press and equal in magnitude only to the changes of the computer age—the transition from reading as a vocal activity done in the monastery to reading as a predominantly silent activity performed by and for individuals.

Confessions


Jean-Jacques Rousseau - 1782
    In trying to explain who he was and how he came to be the object of others' admiration and abuse, Rousseau analyses with unique insight the relationship between an elusive but essential inner self and the variety of social identities he was led to adopt. The book vividly illustrates the mixture of moods and motives that underlie the writing of autobiography: defiance and vulnerability, self-exploration and denial, passion, puzzlement, and detachment. Above all, Confessions is Rousseau's search, through every resource of language, to convey what he despairs of putting into words: the personal quality of one's own existence.

My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen


Alexander Herzen - 1870
    Born in 1812, the illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian landowner, he became one of the most important revolutionary and intellectual figures of his time: as theorist, polemicist, propagandist, and political actor. Fifty years after his death, Lenin revered him as the father of Russian revolutionary socialism. Tolstoy said he had never met another man "with so rare a combination of scintillating brilliance and depth." His monumental autobiography is an unparalleled record of his—and his century's—remarkable life.Herzen's story of his privileged childhood among the Russian aristocracy is lit with the insight of a great novelist. With a trained historian's sense of the interaction of people and events, he limns the grand line of revolutionary development from the earliest stirrings of Russian radicalism throughthe tumultuous ideological debates of the international. His close friends and enemies—Marx, Wagner, Mill, Bakunin, Garibaldi, Kropotkin—are brought brilliantly alive. Dwight Macdonald's knowledgeable and fluent abridgment makes this great work readily available to the modern reader.

The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier


Thad Carhart - 2000
    Intrigued by its simple sign—Desforges Pianos—he enters, only to have his way barred by the shop's imperious owner.Unable to stifle his curiosity, he finally lands the proper introduction, and a world previously hidden is brought into view. Luc, the atelier's master, proves an indispensable guide to the history and art of the piano. Intertwined with the story of a musical friendship are reflections on how pianos work, their glorious history, and stories of the people who care for them, from amateur pianists to the craftsmen who make the mechanism sing. The Piano Shop on the Left Bank is at once a beguiling portrait of a Paris not found on any map and a tender account of the awakening of a lost childhood passion.

Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe


François-René de Chateaubriand - 1850
    Written across different times and places, Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb tells of exotic adventures to the farthest points of the globe, of heroic battles and political struggles, and of the loneliness of a restless soul. And its startling candor—because it would be published only “from beyond the tomb”—makes it almost ridiculously enjoyable.For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A False Spring


Pat Jordan - 1975
    When the reader meets Jordan, he is a hard-throwing pitcher with seemingly limitless potential, one of the first “bonus babies” for the Milwaukee Braves organization. Jordan’s sojourn through the lower levels of minor-league ball takes him through the small towns of America: McCook, Waycross, Davenport, Eau Claire, and Palatka. As the promised land of the majors recedes because of his inconsistency and lack of control, the young man who had previously known only glory and success is forced to face himself.

The Village of Waiting


George Packer - 1988
    Stationed as a Peace Corps instructor in the village of Lavié (the name means "wait a little more") in tiny and underdeveloped Togo, Packer reveals his own schooling at the hands of an unforgettable array of townspeople--peasants, chiefs, charlatans, children, market women, cripples, crazies, and those who, having lost or given up much of their traditional identity and fastened their hopes on "development," find themselves trapped between the familiar repetitions of rural life and the chafing monotony of waiting for change.

Talleyrand


Duff Cooper - 1932
    He was a world-class rogue who held high office in five successive regimes. A well-known opportunist and a notorious bribe taker, Talleyrand's gifts to France arguably outvalued the vast personal fortune he amassed in her service. Once a supporter of the Revolution, after the fall of the monarchy, he fled to England and then to the United States. Talleyrand returned to France two years later and served under Napoleon, and represented France at the Congress of Vienna. Duff Cooper's classic biography contains all the vigor, elegance, and intellect of its remarkable subject.