Seven Ages of Paris

Seven Ages of Paris PDF Author: Alistair Horne
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804151695
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
In this luminous portrait of Paris, the celebrated historian gives us the history, culture, disasters, and triumphs of one of the world’s truly great cities. While Paris may be many things, it is never boring. From the rise of Philippe Auguste through the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIV (who abandoned Paris for Versailles); Napoleon’s rise and fall; Baron Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris (at the cost of much of the medieval city); the Belle Epoque and the Great War that brought it to an end; the Nazi Occupation, the Liberation, and the postwar period dominated by de Gaulle--Horne brings the city’s highs and lows, savagery and sophistication, and heroes and villains splendidly to life. With a keen eye for the telling anecdote and pivotal moment, he portrays an array of vivid incidents to show us how Paris endures through each age, is altered but always emerges more brilliant and beautiful than ever. The Seven Ages of Paris is a great historian’s tribute to a city he loves and has spent a lifetime learning to know. "Knowledgeable and colorful, written with gusto and love.... [An] ambitious and skillful narrative that covers the history of Paris with considerable brio and fervor." —LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Seven Ages of Paris

Seven Ages of Paris PDF Author: Alistair Horne
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804151695
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Get Book

Book Description
In this luminous portrait of Paris, the celebrated historian gives us the history, culture, disasters, and triumphs of one of the world’s truly great cities. While Paris may be many things, it is never boring. From the rise of Philippe Auguste through the reigns of Henry IV and Louis XIV (who abandoned Paris for Versailles); Napoleon’s rise and fall; Baron Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris (at the cost of much of the medieval city); the Belle Epoque and the Great War that brought it to an end; the Nazi Occupation, the Liberation, and the postwar period dominated by de Gaulle--Horne brings the city’s highs and lows, savagery and sophistication, and heroes and villains splendidly to life. With a keen eye for the telling anecdote and pivotal moment, he portrays an array of vivid incidents to show us how Paris endures through each age, is altered but always emerges more brilliant and beautiful than ever. The Seven Ages of Paris is a great historian’s tribute to a city he loves and has spent a lifetime learning to know. "Knowledgeable and colorful, written with gusto and love.... [An] ambitious and skillful narrative that covers the history of Paris with considerable brio and fervor." —LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Seven Ages of Paris

Seven Ages of Paris PDF Author: Alistair Horne
Publisher: Pan Publishing
ISBN: 9781509889259
Category : City planning
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
In this wonderfully readable book, Alistair Horne tells the huge and romantic story of Paris through seven ages of turmoil and change: the Middle Ages, the 100 years war, the Paris of Louis XIV, the age of Napoleon, the Commune, the Empire days of Louis-Napoleon and Eugenie, and the First World War and De Gaulle. Interweaving historical narrative with telling detail, this is a fluent and definitive work of social and cultural history. 'The best book I have read on Paris in a long time' Gregor Dallas, BBC History Books of the Year 'Reading Seven Ages of Paris is like taking an exciting trip in a French balloon' Antonia Fraser, New Statesman Books of the Year 'Provides not only a panorama of the capital, but also a well-crafted history of France with a nice balance between broad overviews and engaging episodes and details' Jonathan Fenby, The Times

Paris in the Middle Ages

Paris in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Simone Roux
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812241592
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Centering on the streets of this metropolis, Simone Roux peers into the secret lives of people within their homes and the public world of affairs and entertainments, populating the book with laborers, shop keepers, magistrates, thieves, and strollers.

Paris

Paris PDF Author: Andrew Hussey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608192377
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 696

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Book Description
If Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon described daily life in contemporary Paris, this book describes daily life in Paris throughout its history: a history of the city from the point of view of the Parisians themselves. Paris captures everyone's imaginations: It's a backdrop for Proust's fictional pederast, Robert Doisneau's photographic kiss, and Edith Piaf's serenaded soldier-lovers; a home as much to romance and love poems as to prostitution and opium dens. The many pieces of the city coexist, each one as real as the next. What's more, the conflicted identity of the city is visible everywhere-between cobblestones, in bars, on the métro. In this lively and lucid volume, Andrew Hussey brings to life the urchins and artists who've left their marks on the city, filling in the gaps of a history that affected the disenfranchised as much as the nobility. Paris: The Secret History ranges across centuries, movements, and cultural and political beliefs, from Napoleon's overcrowded cemeteries to Balzac's nocturnal flight from his debts. For Hussey, Paris is a city whose long and conflicted history continues to thrive and change. The book's is a picaresque journey through royal palaces, brothels, and sidewalk cafés, uncovering the rich, exotic, and often lurid history of the world's most beloved city.

How Paris Became Paris

How Paris Became Paris PDF Author: Joan DeJean
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608195910
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
When Paris became the ultimate destination city.

Paris in the Fifties

Paris in the Fifties PDF Author: Stanley Karnow
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307761517
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
In July 1947, fresh out of college and long before he would win the Pulitzer Prize and become known as one of America's finest historians, Stanley Karnow boarded a freighter bound for France, planning to stay for the summer. He stayed for ten years, first as a student and later as a correspondent for Time magazine. By the time he left, Karnow knew Paris so intimately that his French colleagues dubbed him "le plus parisien des Américains" --the most Parisian American. Now, Karnow returns to the France of his youth, perceptively and wittily illuminating a time and place like none other. Karnow came to France at a time when the French were striving to return to the life they had enjoyed before the devastation of World War II. Yet even during food shortages, political upheavals, and the struggle to come to terms with a world in which France was no longer the mighty power it had been, Paris remained a city of style, passion, and romance. Paris in the Fifties transports us to Latin Quarter cafés and basement jazz clubs, to unheated apartments and glorious ballrooms. We meet such prominent political figures as Charles de Gaulle and Pierre Mendès-France, as well as Communist hacks and the demagogic tax rebel Pierre Poujade. We get to know illustrious intellectuals, among them Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and André Malraux, and visit the glittering salons where aristocrats with exquisite manners mingled with trendy novelists, poets, critics, artists, composers, playwrights, and actors. We meet Christian Dior, who taught Karnow the secrets of haute couture, and Prince Curnonsky, France's leading gourmet, who taught the young reporter to appreciate the complexities of haute cuisine. Karnow takes us to marathon murder trials in musty courtrooms, accompanies a group of tipsy wine connoisseurs on a tour of the Beaujolais vineyards, and recalls the famous automobile race at Le Mans when a catastrophic accident killed more than eighty spectators. Back in Paris, Karnow hung out with visiting celebrities like Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles, and Audrey Hepburn, and in Paris in the Fifties we meet them too. A veteran reporter and historian, Karnow has written a vivid and delightful history of a charmed decade in the greatest city in the world.

Transforming Paris

Transforming Paris PDF Author: David P. Jordan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439106010
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
The Paris we know today, with its grand boulevards, its bridges and parks, its monumental beauty, was essentially built in only seventeen years, in the middle of the nineteenth century. In this brief period, whole neighborhoods of medieval and revolutionary Paris -- over-crowded, dangerous, and filthy -- were razed, and from the rubble a modern city of light and air emerged. This triumphant rebuilding was chiefly the work of one man, Baron Georges Haussmann, Napoleon III's Prefect of the Seine. It was Haussmann's task to assert, in stone, the power and permanence of Paris, to show the world that it was the seat of an empire of mythic proportions. To this end, he imposed grand visual perspectives, as when he transformed Napoleon I's Arc de Triomphe into a magnificent twelve-armed star from which radiated the broadest boulevards of Europe. Below ground, his modern sewer system became one of the wonders of the civilized world, eagerly toured by royalty and commoners alike. Haussmann's mandate was not only to create an impression of grandeur but to secure the city for better control by government. By creating formal spaces where there had previously been a maze of chaotic streets, Haussmann opened Paris to effective police control and thwarted the recurrent demonstration of its well-known revolutionary fervor. The determined and autocratic Haussmann imprinted rational order and bourgeois civility on the unruly city which had for so long simmered with riot and insurrection. Though he planted chestnut trees, installed gas lights, rebuilt the water supply, and improved transportation and housing, Haussmann's labors were (and remain) controversial. He forced tens of thousands of the poor from the center of the city, and destroyed significant parts of old Paris. But in this important new biography David Jordan reminds us that Haussmann was not immune to the charms of the old city. By leaving some areas intact, the Baron achieved the grand effect of implanting a modern city boldly within an ancient one. Here, at last, Haussmann's labors are given the aesthetic as well as the historical appreciation they deserve.

Paris

Paris PDF Author: Renzo Rossi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788888166315
Category : Paris (France)
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
Illustrations and text provide an overview of the history of Paris, France.

La Belle France

La Belle France PDF Author: Alistair Horne
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030742653X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
"A useful and charming introduction to a nation that has oh-so-definitely helped make the modern world what it is... Horne does a service in helping the reading navigate the complexities of French history." —Los Angeles Times From the aclaimed British historian and author of Seven Ages of Paris comes a sweeping, grand narrative written with all the verve, erudition, and vividness that are his hallmarks. It recounts the hugely absorbing story of the country that has contributed to the world so much talent, style, and political innovation. Beginning with Julius Caesar’s division of Gaul into three parts, Horne leads us through the ages from Charlemagne to Chirac, touring battlefields from the Hundred Years’ War to Indochina and Algeria, and giving us luminous portraits of the nation’s leaders, philosophers, writers, artists, and composers. This is a captivating, beautifully illustrated, and comprehensive yet concise history of France.

Paris

Paris PDF Author: Leonard Pitt
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1582436223
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
How would Paris look if images from its glorious past were placed side–by–side with photographs of the city today? In Paris: A Journey Through Time, Leonard Pitt does just this. With a stunning array of archival and contemporary photos he peels away the many layers of old Paris to document the city's transformation with events such as the demolition of a section of rue Beaubourg in 1975 and its eventual reconstruction into modern condos and a shopping center, or the narrow cobblestoned rue du Four becoming the wide, paved street we know today bustling with automobiles and bicycles. Along with these photos from the past and present come detailed maps for walking tours with old schematics and plans for construction that may or may not have been carried out, illustrating the strange ways that a city can develop over hundreds of years. Painstakingly researched, Paris: A Journey Through Time is a tour through Paris, seen through the lens of photographers who lived during each golden age of demolition and construction, and compiled into one tremendous account of the true hidden Paris.