Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris
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The secrets of the City of Light, revealed in the lives of the great, the near-great, and the forgotten—by the author of the acclaimed The Discovery of France. The Barnes & Noble Review [The] stories themselves are unforgettable. I was fascinated by the tale of how Madame Émile Zola discovered her husband's infidelity and summoned the courage to create an unusual family (with 21th-century outlines) with real kindness and without rancor. Likewise, Hitler's visit to Paris, juxtaposed with the experiences of Jewish children during the war, kept me awake thinking about the kinds of facts we label history. Another chapter tells how Senator François Mitterrand won fame in 1959 (some twenty-two years before being elected president of France) as a leading champion of the fight against right-wing terrorism, after he survived an assassination attempt -- only to be exposed as a fraud who made up the bogus assassination himself. Not for the first time, I found myself thinking, "Who knew?" Frankly, these stories often read as if O. Henry had been let loose in the Paris archives. I like reading O. Henry's stories, and I daresay that most people curious about history, Paris, or mysterious tales will love this book. Like Paris itself, it's intoxicating, and hard to leave behind.
List of IllustrationsMapDeparture 1One Night at the Palais-Royal 7The Man Who Saved Paris 25Lost 43Restoration 61Files of the Surete 91A Property in Bohemia 113Marville 135Regression 157Madame Zola 175Marcel in the Metro 199The Notre-Dame Equation 217A Little Tour of Paris 247Occupation 269Lovers of Saint-Germain-des-Pres 285The Day of the Fox 315Expanding the Domain of the Possible 347Peripherique 381Sarko, Bouna and Zyed 403Terminus: The North Col 423Chronology 437Sources 447Index of Paris and Conurbation 463General Index 471Acknowledgements 477
