Author: Kati Marton
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451691556
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Marton first spent time in Paris during college in 1968, when France was in revolt; as a young student she was inspired by researching the history of her survivalist family who had escaped from communist Hungary to France. Ten years later, Paris was the setting for her big career break as ABC bureau chief, as well as where she found passionate love with Peter Jennings, the man to whom she was married for 15 years and had two children. It was again in Paris, years later, where she found enduring love with her husband, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. And it was to Paris where Kati returned in order to rebuild her spirit in the wake of Richard's death. Kati Marton's newest memoir is a candid exploration of many kinds of love, as well as a love letter to the city of Paris itself.
Author: Kip Kotzen (ed)
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
ISBN: 9780767907996
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
A collection of essays in which fourteen contemporary writers discuss how their lives and work have been influenced by the writings of J.D. Salinger.
Author: Stephane Kirkland
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 1250021669
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
Stephane Kirkland gives an engrossing account of Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and one of the greatest transformations of a major city in modern history Traditionally known as a dirty, congested, and dangerous city, 19th Century Paris, France was transformed in an extraordinary period from 1848 to 1870, when the government launched a huge campaign to build streets, squares, parks, churches, and public buildings. The Louvre Palace was expanded, Notre-Dame Cathedral was restored and the French masterpiece of the Second Empire, the Opéra Garnier, was built. A very large part of what we see when we visit Paris today originates from this short span of twenty-two years. The vision for the new Nineteenth Century Paris belonged to Napoleon III, who had led a long and difficult climb to absolute power. But his plans faltered until he brought in a civil servant, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, to take charge of the implementation. Heedless of controversy, at tremendous cost, Haussmann pressed ahead with the giant undertaking until, in 1870, his political enemies brought him down, just months before the collapse of the whole regime brought about the end of an era. Paris Reborn is a must-read for anyone who ever wondered how Paris, the city universally admired as a standard of urban beauty, became what it is.
Author: Mj Moore
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781942762249
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Floating in time between 2015 and 1944, this novel both celebrates and laments exalted hopes and broken dreams. The narrator is a sentient, unique, dying woman in hospice who "talks out" her memories via the cassette tapes that her favorite caregiver loyally provides. The heart of her tale revolves around being in the Women's Army Corps (the WACs) between 1943-1945, when she had two life-transforming encounters with a soldier named Jerry. They're both products of their time, in love with MGM musicals and the great Swing Bands, and also much influenced by the best writers of their epoch. We know "Jerry," of course, as J. D. Salinger. But in this novel, we're presented with a wartime, uniformed, pre-fame, pre-"Catcher" G. I. Salinger. And from their chance meeting in the fall of 1943 (when they witness a final stateside performance by Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band in New York) to a brief reunion in Liberated Paris in the waning days of August 1944 (where an older, exhausted Hemingway blesses the young, aspiring Salinger), our narrator conjures up the echoes of an era. With her own life winding down during one season in hospice, the war years (and so much more) are always on her mind. This narrative is her testimonial, on behalf of her generation. "We share not only the narrator's memories, but also her passion for literature, for music, and for film; plus her insightful zest for life that leads to a love affair with one of the great authors of the 20th century. A smart and poignant journey through a life well-lived...at once lighthearted and bittersweet." --Kenneth Slawenski, International bestselling author of J. D. Salinger: A Life "The plucky heroine of this inventive novel may be paralyzed and dying, but her vibrant mind is a treasury of her generation's politics and culture, especially its popular music. I found myself singing along with her on every page." --Hilma Wolitzer, New York Times bestselling author of An Available Man, Summer Reading, The Doctor's Daughter, In the Flesh, and other novels "M. J. Moore proves that not all compelling, worthwhile stories about WWII have yet been told or imagined..."--Erica Heller, author of Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad, The Apthorp was Home, and Life Was a Catch-22
Author: Kenneth Slawenski
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679604790
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 466
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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The inspiration for the major motion picture Rebel in the Rye One of the most popular and mysterious figures in American literary history, the author of the classic Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger eluded fans and journalists for most of his life. Now he is the subject of this definitive biography, which is filled with new information and revelations garnered from countless interviews, letters, and public records. Kenneth Slawenski explores Salinger’s privileged youth, long obscured by misrepresentation and rumor, revealing the brilliant, sarcastic, vulnerable son of a disapproving father and doting mother. Here too are accounts of Salinger’s first broken heart—after Eugene O’Neill’s daughter, Oona, left him—and the devastating World War II service that haunted him forever. J. D. Salinger features this author’s dramatic encounters with luminaries from Ernest Hemingway to Elia Kazan, his office intrigues with famous New Yorker editors and writers, and the stunning triumph of The Catcher in the Rye, which would both make him world-famous and hasten his retreat into the hills of New Hampshire. J. D. Salinger is this unique author’s unforgettable story in full—one that no lover of literature can afford to miss. Praise for J. D. Salinger: A Life “Startling . . . insightful . . . [a] terrific literary biography.”—USA Today “It is unlikely that any author will do a better job than Mr. Slawenski capturing the glory of Salinger’s life.”—The Wall Street Journal “Slawenski fills in a great deal and connects the dots assiduously; it’s unlikely that any future writer will uncover much more about Salinger than he has done.”—Boston Sunday Globe “Offers perhaps the best chance we have to get behind the myth and find the man.”—Newsday “[Slawenski has] greatly fleshed out and pinned down an elusive story with precision and grace.”—Chicago Sun-Times “Earnest, sympathetic and perceptive . . . [Slawenski] does an evocative job of tracing the evolution of Salinger’s work and thinking.”—The New York Times
Author: Sebastian Faulks
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1250305659
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
“Cunningly crafted. . . . France’s unquiet histories are brought to life by a master storyteller.” —Financial Times (UK) A story of resistance, complicity, and an unlikely, transformative friendship, set in Paris, from internationally bestselling novelist Sebastian Faulks. American historian Hannah intends to immerse herself in World War II research in Paris, wary of paying much attention to the city where a youthful misadventure once left her dejected. But a chance encounter with Tariq, a Moroccan teenager whose visions of the City of Lights as a world of opportunity and rebirth starkly contrast with her own, disrupts her plan. Hannah agrees to take Tariq in as a lodger, forming an unexpected connection with the young man. Yet as Tariq begins to assimilate into the country he risked his life to enter, he realizes that its dark past and current ills are far more complicated than he’d anticipated. And Hannah, diving deeper into her work on women’s lives in Nazi-occupied Paris, uncovers a shocking piece of history that threatens to dismantle her core beliefs. Soon they each must question which sacrifices are worth their happiness and what, if anything, the tumultuous past century can teach them about the future. From the sweltering streets of Tangier to deep beneath Paris via the Metro, from the affecting recorded accounts of women in German-occupied France and into the future through our hopes for these characters, Paris Echo offers a tough and poignant story of injustices and dreams.
Author: Luc Sante
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374299323
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
"A vivid investigation into the seamy underside of nineteenth and twentieth century Paris"--
Author: Andrew Hussey
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0374711666
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 505
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Book Description
This provocative look at France’s relationship with the Arab world offers a “bracing mix of journalism and history [that] couldn’t be more timely” (Mitchell Cohen, The New York Times Book Review). To fully understand the social and political pressures wracking contemporary France—and, indeed, all of Europe—we must look beyond domestic issues. Unemployment, economic stagnation, and social deprivation certainly exacerbate the ongoing turmoil in the banlieues. But, as Andrew Hussey demonstrates here, the root of the problem lies in the continuing fallout from Europe’s colonial era. Hussey draws on his deep knowledge of history, literature, and politics as well as his years of personal experience in France, Algeria, and other Arab countries, to provide a nuanced, holistic view of the present situation. In the course of teasing out the myriad interconnections between past and present, The French Intifada shows that the defining conflict of the twenty-first century will not be between Islam and the West but between two dramatically different experiences of the world—the colonizers and the colonized.
Author: Agnès Poirier
Publisher: Henry Holt
ISBN: 1627790241
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
An incandescent group portrait of the midcentury artists and thinkers whose lives, loves, collaborations, and passions were forged against the wartime destruction and postwar rebirth of Paris In this fascinating tour of a celebrated city during one of its most trying, significant, and ultimately triumphant eras, Agnes Poirier unspools the stories of the poets, writers, painters, and philosophers whose lives collided to extraordinary effect between 1940 and 1950. She gives us the human drama behind some of the most celebrated works of the 20th century, from Richard Wright’s Native Son, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, and James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Saul Bellow's Augie March, along with the origin stories of now legendary movements, from Existentialism to the Theatre of the Absurd, New Journalism, bebop, and French feminism. We follow Arthur Koestler and Norman Mailer as young men, peek inside Picasso’s studio, and trail the twists of Camus's Sartre's, and Beauvoir’s epic love stories. We witness the births and deaths of newspapers and literary journals and peer through keyholes to see the first kisses and last nights of many ill-advised bedfellows. At every turn, Poirier deftly hones in on the most compelling and colorful history, without undermining the crucial significance of the era. She brings to life the flawed, visionary Parisians who fell in love and out of it, who infuriated and inspired one another, all while reconfiguring the world's political, intellectual, and creative landscapes. With its balance of clear-eyed historical narrative and irresistible anecdotal charm, Left Bank transports readers to a Paris teeming with passion, drama, and life.
Author: Imogen Robertson
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466872314
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
“[With] murderous plots, shady Parisian undersides, upper-class dealings. . . . this novel is rich in historical detail and robust with personality.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review Maud Heighton came to Lafond’s famous Academie to paint, and to flee the constraints of her small English town. It took all her courage to escape, but Paris, she quickly realizes, is no place for a light purse. While her fellow students enjoy the dazzling decadence of the Belle Epoque, Maud slips into poverty. Quietly starving, and dreading another cold Paris winter, she stumbles upon an opportunity when Christian Morel engages her as a live-in companion to his beautiful young sister, Sylvie. Maud is overjoyed by her good fortune. With a clean room, hot meals, and an umbrella to keep her dry, she is able to hold her head high as she strolls the streets of Montmartre. No longer hostage to poverty and hunger, Maud can at last devote herself to her art. But all is not as it seems. Christian and Sylvie, Maud soon discovers, are not quite the darlings they pretend to be. Sylvie has a secret addiction to opium and Christian has an ominous air of intrigue. As this dark and powerful tale progresses, Maud is drawn further into the Morels’ world of elegant deception. Their secrets become hers, and soon she is caught in a scheme of betrayal and revenge that will plunge her into the darkness that waits beneath this glittering city of light. “Dramatic and teeming with intrigue, The Paris Winter is a richly detailed historical novel that both thrills and satisfies.” —Shelf Awareness
