Parisians
An Adventure History of Paris
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
No-one knows a city like the people who live there - so who better to relate the history of Paris than its inhabitants through the ages?
Taking us from 1750 to the new millennium, Parisians introduces us to some of those inhabitants: we meet spies, soldiers, scientists and alchemists; police commissioners, photographers and philosophers; adulterers, murderers, prisoners and prostitutes. We encounter political and sexual intrigues, witness real and would-be revolutions, assassination attempts and several all too successful executions; we visit underground caverns and catacombs, enjoy the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower, are there for the opening of the Metro, accompany Hitler on a flying visit to the French capital - and much more besides.
Entertaining and illuminating, and written with Graham Robb's customary attention to detail - and, indeed, the unusual - Parisians is both history and travel guide, yet also part memoir, part mystery. A book unlike any other, it is at once a book to read from cover to cover, to lose yourself in, to dip in and out of at leisure, and a book to return to again and again - rather like the city itself, in fact.
Praise for The Discovery of France:
'An extraordinary journey of discovery that will delight even the most indolent armchair traveller' Daily Telegraph
'A superior historical guidebook for the unhurried traveller, and altogether a book to savour' Independent
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With the same exhilarating sense of historical adventure and narrative elegance he brought to "The Discovery of France", Robb's new book might be called "The Discovery of Paris". Through a series of chronological episodes, Robb relates little-known events in the city's history, each featuring a fascinating figure, some well-known (Napoleon or the great criminal-turned-sleuth Vidocq), some less so (Henry Murger, the struggling writer whose Latin Quarter vignettes became "La Vie de Boh me"). Each figure discovers or reveals an unknown Paris. In the 1770s Charles-Axel Guillaumot explored the ancient quarries beneath the city and built the catacombs there; a little-noticed carved panel at Notre-Dame is at the heart of a 1937 episode involving espionage, alchemy, and a future nuclear inferno. The most thrilling chapter tells the supposedly true tale (the original records are lost) behind "The Count of Monte Cristo"; only the tale of actress and singer Juliette Greco framed as a shooting script fails to entice. With his profound knowledge of Paris, its treasures and squalor, its heroes and victims, Robb reveals a city of not only lights but darkness, which, though discovered, remains unknowable and alluring. "" .
