Download or read book Americans in Paris written by Charles Glass and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Well-traveled journalist Glass (The Tribes Triumphant, 2006, etc.) reckons with a handful of intrepid Americans who stuck it out in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Of the 30,000 Americans who lived in Paris before World War II, the author estimates that about 5,000 stayed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, despite warnings to leave by American Ambassador William Bullitt. When the Nazis marched triumphantly through Paris in June 1940, the French premier had fled, essentially leaving Bullitt, who helped convince the Nazis not to bomb the city, in charge. Americans did not have cause to fear the Germans, as the United States would not declare war on Germany for another two years. Jews and blacks, however, were most often deported to camps. The remaining Americans were able to move rather fluidly between the French and German sides, and sometimes their loyalties grew murky and questionable. In alternating chapters that delineate the daily tension of four years in Occupied Paris, Glass pursues some of the notable American characters who congregated at the protected American sites, including Countess Clara Longworth de Chambrun, a Cincinnati heiress married to a French banker (and descendent of the Marquis de Lafayette), who was steadfast in keeping the American Library running during the Occupation; millionaire industrialist Charles Bedaux, who opened his country estate to marvelous collaborationist parties and later faced charges of treason; stalwart Yankee doctor Sumner Jackson, who tended prisoners and wounded at the American Hospital in Neuilly; and Sylvia Beach, American bookseller and publisher of James Joyce, who eventually had to close her seminal Shakespeare and Company store under Nazi threat of confiscation. "Everybody we knew was for resistance," she declared righteously. Most of Glass's tales aren't quite so clear-cut, but they illuminate a dark, fascinating period in World War II history. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Download or read book The Making of Americans written by Gertrude Stein and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Greater Journey written by David McCullough and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 bestseller that tells the remarkable story of the generations of American artists, writers, and doctors who traveled to Paris, fell in love with the city and its people, and changed America through what they learned, told by America’s master historian, David McCullough. Not all pioneers went west. In The Greater Journey, David McCullough tells the enthralling, inspiring—and until now, untold—story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, and others who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, hungry to learn and to excel in their work. What they achieved would profoundly alter American history. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, was one of this intrepid band. Another was Charles Sumner, whose encounters with black students at the Sorbonne inspired him to become the most powerful voice for abolition in the US Senate. Friends James Fenimore Cooper and Samuel F. B. Morse worked unrelentingly every day in Paris, Morse not only painting what would be his masterpiece, but also bringing home his momentous idea for the telegraph. Harriet Beecher Stowe traveled to Paris to escape the controversy generated by her book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Three of the greatest American artists ever—sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent—flourished in Paris, inspired by French masters. Almost forgotten today, the heroic American ambassador Elihu Washburne bravely remained at his post through the Franco-Prussian War, the long Siege of Paris, and the nightmare of the Commune. His vivid diary account of the starvation and suffering endured by the people of Paris is published here for the first time. Telling their stories with power and intimacy, McCullough brings us into the lives of remarkable men and women who, in Saint-Gaudens’ phrase, longed “to soar into the blue.”

Download or read book The Making of Americans in Paris written by Noel Sloboda and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2008 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While living in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century, expatriate American writers Edith Wharton (1862-1937) and Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) never crossed paths. Even so, they did rub shoulders in print, in autobiographical essays published by The Atlantic Monthly in 1933. Noel Sloboda shows that the authors pursued many of the same professional goals in these essays and in the book-length life writings that grew out of them, A Backward Glance (1934) and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). By analyzing the personal and cultural contexts in which these works were produced, as well as subjects common to both of them, Sloboda illuminates a previously unrecognized solidarity between Wharton and Stein. The relationship between the authors is built upon careful analysis of A Backward Glance and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and it is framed by a consideration of the markets into which their life writings were first released. The alignment of Wharton and Stein as life writers will be of interest to those studying autobiography, modern literature, and American women writers.

Download or read book Paris to the Moon written by Adam Gopnik and published by Random House. This book was released on 2001-12-18 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every corner--in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans. In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light. Gopnik is a longtime New Yorker writer, and the magazine has sent its writers to Paris for decades--but his was above all a personal pilgrimage to the place that had for so long been the undisputed capital of everything cultural and beautiful. It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens, to enjoy a croque monsieur in a Left Bank café--a child (and perhaps a father, too) who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of style we Americans find so elusive. So, in the grand tradition of the American abroad, Gopnik walked the paths of the Tuileries, enjoyed philosophical discussions at his local bistro, wrote as violet twilight fell on the arrondissements. Of course, as readers of Gopnik's beloved and award-winning "Paris Journals" in The New Yorker know, there was also the matter of raising a child and carrying on with day-to-day, not-so-fabled life. Evenings with French intellectuals preceded middle-of-the-night baby feedings; afternoons were filled with trips to the Musée d'Orsay and pinball games; weekday leftovers were eaten while three-star chefs debated a "culinary crisis." As Gopnik describes in this funny and tender book, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar journeys--both hold new routines, new languages, a new set of rules by which everyday life is lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly delightful, often hilarious look at what it was to be an American family man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. "We went to Paris for a sentimental reeducation-I did anyway-even though the sentiments we were instructed in were not the ones we were expecting to learn, which I believe is why they call it an education."

Download or read book Americans in Paris A Literary Anthology written by Adam Gopnik and published by . This book was released on 2004-03-30 with total page 654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Including stories, letters, memoirs, and journalism, "Americans in Paris" distills three centuries of vigorous, glittering, and powerfully emotional writing about the place that Henry James called "the most brilliant city in the world."

Download or read book How Paris Became Paris written by Joan DeJean and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Paris became the ultimate destination city.

Download or read book Paris by the Book written by Liam Callanan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER A missing person, a grieving family, a curious clue: a half-finished manuscript set in Paris Once a week, I chase men who are not my husband. . . . When eccentric novelist Robert Eady abruptly vanishes, he leaves behind his wife, Leah, their daughters, and, hidden in an unexpected spot, plane tickets to Paris. Hoping to uncover clues--and her husband--Leah sets off for France with her girls. Upon their arrival, she discovers an unfinished manuscript, one Robert had been writing without her knowledge . . . and that he had set in Paris. The Eady girls follow the path of the manuscript to a small, floundering English-language bookstore whose weary proprietor is eager to sell. Leah finds herself accepting the offer on the spot. As the family settles into their new Parisian life, they trace the literary paths of some beloved Parisian classics, including Madeline and The Red Balloon, hoping more clues arise. But a series of startling discoveries forces Leah to consider that she may not be ready for what solving this mystery might do to her family--and the Paris she thought she knew. Charming, haunting, and triumphant, Paris by the Book follows one woman's journey as she writes her own story, exploring the power of family and the magic that hides within the pages of a book.

Download or read book Becoming Americans in Paris written by Brooke L. Blower and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-17 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans often look back on Paris between the world wars as a charming escape from the enduring inequalities and reactionary politics of the United States. In this bold and original study, Brooke Blower shows that nothing could be further from the truth. She reveals the breadth of American activities in the capital, the lessons visitors drew from their stay, and the passionate responses they elicited from others. For many sojourners-not just for the most famous expatriate artists and writers- Paris served as an important crossroads, a place where Americans reimagined their position in the world and grappled with what it meant to be American in the new century, even as they came up against conflicting interpretations of American power by others. Interwar Paris may have been a capital of the arts, notorious for its pleasures, but it was also smoldering with radical and reactionary plots, suffused with noise, filth, and chaos, teeming with immigrants and refugees, communist rioters, fascism admirers, overzealous police, and obnoxious tourists. Sketching Americans' place in this evocative landscape, Blower shows how arrivals were drawn into the capital's battles, both wittingly and unwittingly. Americans in Paris found themselves on the front lines of an emerging culture of political engagements-a transatlantic matrix of causes and connections, which encompassed debates about "Americanization" and "anti-American" protests during the Sacco-Vanzetti affair as well as a host of other international incidents. Blower carefully depicts how these controversies and a backdrop of polarized European politics honed Americans' political stances and sense of national distinctiveness. A model of urban, transnational history, Becoming Americans in Paris offers a nuanced portrait of how Americans helped to shape the cultural politics of interwar Paris, and, at the same time, how Paris helped to shape modern American political culture.

Download or read book Me Talk Pretty One Day written by David Sedaris and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2009-05-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new collection from David Sedaris is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris has inspired hilarious pieces, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, about his attempts to learn French. His family is another inspiration. You Cant Kill the Rooster is a portrait of his brother who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. And no one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers and cashiers with 6-inch fingernails. Compared by The New Yorker to Twain and Hawthorne, Sedaris has become one of our best-loved authors. Sedaris is an amazing reader whose appearances draw hundreds, and his performancesincluding a jaw-dropping impression of Billie Holiday singing I wish I were an Oscar Meyer weinerare unforgettable. Sedariss essays on living in Paris are some of the funniest hes ever written. At last, someone even meaner than the French! The sort of blithely sophisticated, loopy humour that might have resulted if Dorothy Parker and James Thurber had had a love child. Entertainment Weekly on Barrel Fever Sidesplitting Not one of the essays in this new collection failed to crack me up; frequently I was helpless. The New York Times Book Review on Naked

Download or read book Letter to the Americans written by Jean Cocteau and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like Alexis de Tocqueville a century earlier, Jean Cocteau offers a powerful reminder to Americans of their own potential—and issues In 1949, Jean Cocteau spent twenty days in New York, and began composing on the plane ride home this essay filled with the vivid impressions of his trip. With his unmistakable prose and graceful wit, he compares and contrasts French and American culture: the different values they place on art, literature, liberty, psychology, and dreams. Cocteau sees the incredibly buoyant hopes in America’s promise, while at the same time warning of the many ills that the nation will have to confront—its hypocrisy, sexism, racism, and hegemonic aspirations—in order to realize this potential. Never before translated into English, Letter to the Americans remains as timely and urgent as when it was first published in France over seventy years ago.

Download or read book The Making of Paris written by Russell Kelley and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paris has long been the world’s most popular destination and, in the view of many, the world’s most beautiful city – the product of two thousand years of continuous improvement and refinement. The Making of Paris is the story of how Paris evolved from a small fishing village on an island in the middle of the Seine River into the City of Light. The focus of the book is on the city as seen from the street, in order to understand the evolution of the urban landscape of Paris through the rues and boulevards and the buildings and monuments from its long and storied past.

Download or read book Paris France written by Gertrude Stein and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-06-24 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matched only by Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, Paris France is a "fresh and sagacious" (The New Yorker) classic of prewar France and its unforgettable literary eminences. Celebrated for her innovative literary bravura, Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) settled into a bustling Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, never again to return to her native America. While in Paris, she not only surrounded herself with—and tirelessly championed the careers of—a remarkable group of young expatriate artists but also solidified herself as "one of the most controversial figures of American letters" (New York Times). In Paris France (1940)—published here with a new introduction from Adam Gopnik—Stein unites her childhood memories of Paris with her observations about everything from art and war to love and cooking. The result is an unforgettable glimpse into a bygone era, one on the brink of revolutionary change.

Download or read book From Harlem to Paris written by Michel Fabre and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This academic study uses accounts from more than 60 African American writers--Countee Cullen, James Baldwin, Chester Himes et al.--to explain why they were more readily accepted socially in Paris than in America. Fabre (The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright) shows that French/black American affinity started in pre-Civil War New Orleans (and not, as the title suggests, in Harlem), when illegitimate mulattos with inheritances from French slave-owners sent their children to Paris to be educated. The book concludes that acceptance and appreciation of black Americans were based largely of French distaste both for white Americans, whom the French found egotistical, and for black Africans, with whom the French had a bitter "mutual colonial history."

Download or read book Gertrude Stein Writings 1903 1932 LOA 99 written by Gertrude Stein and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 966 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of works written by Gertrude Stein between the years of 1903 and 1932.

Download or read book Bricktop s Paris written by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2015-01-31 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2015 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Longlisted for the 2015 American Library in Paris Book Award During the Jazz Age, France became a place where an African American woman could realize personal freedom and creativity, in narrative or in performance, in clay or on canvas, in life and in love. These women were participants in the life of the American expatriate colony, which included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Cole Porter, and they commingled with bohemian avant-garde writers and artists like Picasso, Breton, Colette, and Matisse. Bricktop's Paris introduces the reader to twenty-five of these women and the city they encountered. Following this nonfiction account, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting provides a fictionalized autobiography of Ada "Bricktop" Smith, which brings the players from the world of nonfiction into a Paris whose elegance masks a thriving underworld.

Download or read book The French Way written by Richard F. Kuisel and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preface -- Note on anti-Americanism -- America à la mode: the 1980s -- Anti-Americanism in retreat: Jack Lang, cultural imperialism, and the anti-anti-Americans -- Reverie and rivalry: Mitterrand and Reagan-Bush -- The adventures of Mickey Mouse, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds in the land of the Gauls -- Taming the hyperpower: the 1990s -- The French way: society, economy and culture in the 1990s -- The paradox of the fin de siècle: anti-Americanism and Americanization.