Yet one important lesson never seemed to sink in: how to communicate comfortably with the French, even when you speak their language. In The Bonjour Effect Jean-Benoît and Julie chronicle the lessons they learned after they returned to France to live, for a year, with their twin daughters. They offer up all the lessons they learned and explain, in a book as fizzy as a bottle of the finest French champagne, the most important aspect of all: the French don't communicate, they converse. To understand and speak French well, one must understand that French conversation runs on a set of rules that go to the heart of French culture. Why do the French like talking about "the decline of France"? Why does broaching a subject like money end all discussion? Why do the French become so aroused debating the merits and qualities of their own language? Through encounters with school principals, city hall civil servants, gas company employees, old friends and business acquaintances, Julie and Jean-Benoît explain why, culturally and historically, conversation with the French is not about communicating or being nice. It's about being interesting. After reading The Bonjour Effect, even readers with a modicum of French language ability will be able to hold their own the next time they step into a bistro on the Left Bank.

    Daughter of the Empress of Austria; marriage to the prince of France; the ill-fated Affair of the Necklace, tales of excess and infidelity; her flight from Paris; her execution by guillotine. Until now the reality about this strong willed, compassionate and beautiful woman has proven elusive. Madame Campan, an accomplice to many of the actions above and more, here strives to reveal the truth.

     Liliane Bettencourt is the world s richest woman and the eleventh wealthiest person on the planet, as of 2016. But at ninety-four, she s embroiled in an incredible controversy that has dominated the headlines and ensnared a former president of France in the controversy. Why? Thanks to an artist and photographer named Francois-Marie Banier, who was given hundreds of millions of dollars by Liliane. Liliane s daughter, Francoise, considers Banier a con man and filed a lawsuit against him, but Banier has a far different story to tell. It s all become Europe s biggest scandal in years, uncovering a shadowy corporate history, buried World War II secrets, illicit political payoffs, and much more. Written by Tom Sancton, aVanity Faircontributor and formerTimecorrespondent currently living in France, The Bettencourt Affairis part courtroom drama; part upstairs-downstairs tale; part business narrative of a glamorous global company with past Nazi connections; and part character-driven story of a complex, fascinating family and the intruder who nearly tore it apart."

    . . Intellectually nuanced, exquisitely written”—The New Republic) now gives us an ambitious, far-reaching book—a perfect joining of subject and writer: a portrait of fin-de-siècle France. He writes about the forces that led up to the twilight years of the nineteenth century when France, defeated by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, was forced to cede the border states of Alsace and Lorraine, and of the resulting civil war, waged without restraint, that toppled Napoléon III, crushed the Paris Commune, and provoked a dangerous nationalism that gripped the Republic. The author describes how postwar France, a nation splintered in the face of humiliation by the foreigner—Prussia—dissolved into two cultural factions: moderates, proponents of a secular state (“Clericalism, there is the enemy!”), and reactionaries, who saw their ideal nation—militant, Catholic, royalist—embodied by Joan of Arc, with their message, that France had suffered its defeat in 1871 for having betrayed its true faith. A bitter debate took hold of the heart and soul of the country, framed by the vision of “science” and “technological advancement” versus “supernatural intervention.” Brown shows us how Paris’s most iconic monuments that rose up during those years bear witness to the passionate decades-long quarrel. At one end of Paris was Gustave Eiffel’s tower, built in iron and more than a thousand feet tall, the beacon of a forward-looking nation; at Paris’ other end, at the highest point in the city, the basilica of the Sacré-Coeur, atonement for the country’s sins and moral laxity whose punishment was France’s defeat in the war . . . Brown makes clear that the Dreyfus Affair—the cannonade of the 1890s—can only be understood in light of these converging forces. “The Affair” shaped the character of public debate and informed private life. At stake was the fate of a Republic born during the Franco-Prussian War and reared against bitter opposition. The losses that abounded during this time—the financial loss suffered by thousands in the crash of the Union Génerale, a bank founded in 1875 to promote Catholic interests with Catholic capital outside the Rothschilds’ sphere of influence, along with the failure of the Panama Canal Company—spurred the partisan press, which blamed both disasters on Jewry.The author writes how the roiling conflicts that began thirty years before Dreyfus did not end with his exoneration in 1900. Instead they became the festering point that led to France’s surrender to Hitler’s armies in 1940, when the Third Republic fell and the Vichy government replaced it, with Marshal Pétain heralded as the latest incarnation of Joan of Arc, France’s savior . . .From the Hardcover edition.

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    More important is the author's exploration of the political, economic, social and artistic forces that developed during the long reign of the Sun-King. It was an age of contradictions and compromises and high taxes and formal manners. And to the day he died Louis XIV ate with his fingers and acted like God. The opening account of Louis XIV's private life and loves sets the pace for this witty, provocative account of a century that, like our own, was a time of transition, dissatisfaction and progress. This was the age of Moliere, Racine, Corneille...the age of the salons and the graceful correspondents. And also an age that sent thousands of Huguenots to the galleys, the notorious death ships that served as seventeenth-century concentration camps.

    Much better known for his incisive and mordant explorations of power and social exclusion, Foucault here assumes a more playful stance. By exploring the nuances and ambiguities of Magritte's visual critique of language, he finds the painter less removed than previously thought from the pioneers of modern abstraction.

    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.

    Lucy Worsley takes us through the bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen, covering the architectural history of each room, but concentrating on what people actually did in bed, in the bath, at the table, and at the stove.

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

    The story of Sylvia Beach's love for Shakespeare and Company supplies the lifeblood of this book.

    Collected here for the first time, their essays create a unique and timeless portrait of the world capital of love and food. When the book begins, just after the war, we are in a hungry city whose chefs struggle to find the eggs and cream they need to re-create the cuisine from before the German occupation. We watch as Paris comes alive again with zinc-topped tables crowded with people drinking café au lait and reveling in crisp baguettes, and the triumphant rebirth of three-star cuisine. In time, nouvelle cuisine is born and sweeps through a newly chic and modern city. It is all here: the old-time bourgeois dinners, the tastemakers of the fashion world, the hero-chefs, and, of course, Paris in all its snobbery and refinement, its inimitable pursuit of the art of fine living. Beautifully written, these dispatches from the past are intimate and immediate, allowing us to watch the month-by-month changes in the world’s most wonderful city. Remembrance of Things Paris is a book for anyone who wants to return to a Paris where a buttery madeleine is waiting around every corner.Contributors include Louis Diat, Naomi Barry, Joseph Wechsberg, Judith and Evan Jones, Don Dresden, Lillian Langseth-Christensen, Diane Johnson, Michael Lewis, and Jonathan Gold.

    Having received instruction from her beloved father, Louis Vigée, a prominent Parisian guild painter, Lisette possesses all the qualities of a brilliant young painter, but is saddled with a singular disadvantage – being a woman in 18-century Paris. Undeterred, Lisette believes that she can become a painter. Approaching a marriageable age, her parents have other plans for Lisette, ones that don’t include painting. Lisette finds support in Queen Marie Antoinette and a dashing art collector and French Army officer named Amante, who is clearly intrigued by her talent and beauty. After Lisette’s father dies unexpectedly, her family is left in dire financial straits. Lisette wants to support her family, but before she can sell a single painting, her mother marries a wealthy merchant jeweler named Le Sèvre. Le Sèvre discovers Lisette’s artistic abilities and soon has her painting portraits of his noble and wealthy jewelry clientele.It quickly becomes clear that Le Sèvre only wants to control Lisette, leading to severe consequences for her budding career, Amante’s pursuit of her affections and even her safety. Lisette realizes that she must find her own way – before it is too late.Becoming Lisette is Book One of the Queen’s Painter Series.

    It is one of the major early historical works on the French Revolution.

    This text presents a new reading of the Bayeux tapestry that radically alters our understanding of the events of 1066 and reveals the astonishing story of early Medieval Europe's greatest treasure.