{"product_id":"paris-isbn-9780307474896","title":"Paris","description":"This unique guide to one of the world’s most beloved tourist destinations combines fascinating articles by a wide variety of writers, woven throughout with the editor’s own indispensable advice and opinions—providing in one package an unparalleled experience of an extraordinary place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis edition on Paris features:\u003cbr\u003e● Articles, interviews, and reminiscences from writers, visitors, residents, and experts on the region, including Ina Garten, André Aciman, Judith Jones, Mireille Guiliano, Naomi Barry, and Patricia Wells. \u003cbr\u003e● In-depth pieces that illuminate such treasures of the City of Light as the bridges on the Seine; Parisian train stations; cobbled streets and hidden gardens; the peculiarities of the French language; the delights of French bread, chocolate, and wine; and much more.\u003cbr\u003e● Enticing recommendations for further reading, including novels, histories, memoirs, cookbooks, and guidebooks.\u003cbr\u003e● An A–Z Miscellany of concise and entertaining information on special shops, hotels, and museums not to be missed; French phrases and customs; boat trips on the Seine; Jewish history; antiques; spas; tips for shopping; and the most romantic spots in Paris.\u003cbr\u003e● Recommendations for excursions to Chartres, Fontainebleau, Burgundy, Brittany, and Champagne.\u003cbr\u003e● More than 150 photographs and illustrations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIntroduction \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e FRANCE  \u003cbr\u003e France: The Outsider \u003ci\u003eby Ian Jack\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Dreyfus Is Decorated \u003cbr\u003e La Poste and I \u003ci\u003eby Barbara Wilde\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The French, Rude? Mais Non! \u003ci\u003eby Joseph Voelker\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRecommended Reading \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e PARIS \u003cbr\u003e Foreword to John Russell’s \u003ci\u003eParis by Rosamond Bernier\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e According to Plan—Maps of Paris \u003ci\u003eby Catharine Reynolds\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Why I Love My Quincaillerie \u003ci\u003eby Barbara Wilde\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Thirza’s Take on Paris \u003ci\u003eby Thirza Vallois\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Proust’s Paris \u003ci\u003eby Sanche de Gramont\u003c\/i\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e We’ll Always Have…Questions by \u003ci\u003eAnn Burack-Weiss \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRecommended Reading \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eInterview: Patricia Wells \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e LES QUARTIERS \u003cbr\u003e The New Left Bank \u003ci\u003eby Alexander Lobrano\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e On the Île Saint-Louis \u003ci\u003eby Herbert Gold\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Paris of Parisians \u003ci\u003eby Catharine Reynolds\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRecommended Reading \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e LA CUISINE FRANÇAISE \u003cbr\u003e A Saga of Bread \u003ci\u003eby Naomi Barry\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Liquid Gold \u003ci\u003eby Susan Herrmann Loomis\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Anatomy of Success: Remi Flachard, International Specialist in Vintage Cookbooks \u003ci\u003eby Naomi Barry\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Why We Love French Wine \u003ci\u003eby Peter Hellman\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRecommended Reading \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eInterview: Kermit Lynch \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eInterview: Ina Garten \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e A TABLE! \u003cbr\u003e A Clean, Well-Lighted Café in Montparnasse \u003ci\u003eby Adair Lara\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Counter Culture: The Success of Breaking the Rules \u003ci\u003eby Naomi Barry\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Thanksgiving in Paris \u003ci\u003eby Laura Chamaret\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRecommended Reading \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eInterview: Alexander Lobrano \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e MUSEUMS, MONUMENTS, AND GARDENS \u003cbr\u003e The Walls of Paris \u003ci\u003eby Mary McAuliffe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Affordable Gothic Thrills \u003ci\u003eby Anne Prah-Perochon\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e A Tale of Two Artists \u003ci\u003eby Catharine Reynolds\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Of Cobbles, Bikes, and Bobos \u003ci\u003eby David Downie\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Perfection Squared \u003ci\u003eby André Aciman\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Solar-Powered Timekeeping in Paris \u003ci\u003eby Susan Allport\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Station to Station \u003ci\u003eby Barbara Dinerman\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Streets of Desire \u003ci\u003eby Vivian Thomas\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Paint the Town \u003ci\u003eby Paris Muse\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Passages \u003ci\u003eby Catharine Reynolds\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Secret Shops of the Palais Royal \u003ci\u003eby Barbara Wilde \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRecommended Reading \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e THE SEINE \u003cbr\u003e Bridging the Seine \u003ci\u003eby Vivian Thomas \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRecommended Reading \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e PERSONALITIES \u003cbr\u003e The Master of the Machine \u003ci\u003eby John Russell\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Message \u003ci\u003eby Jeannette Ferrary\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e We’ll Always Have Paris \u003ci\u003eby Stacy Schiff\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Le Père Tanguy \u003ci\u003eby Henri Perruchot\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRecommended Reading \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e THE ÎLE-DE-FRANCE AND BEYOND—EXCURSIONS FROM PARIS \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eInterview: David Downie and Alison Harris \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A PARIS MISCELLANY \u003cbr\u003e“Perfect for both the armchair traveler and those who want to get up and go.” —\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eBarrie Kerper\u003c\/b\u003e, a former journalist and avid traveler, is the editor of numerous books in the \u003cb\u003eCollected Traveler\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eseries.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrance: The Outsider\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eIan Jack\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis editorial was the introductory essay in an issue of the fine, thought-provoking literary magazine \u003ci\u003eGranta\u003c\/i\u003e. Though it appeared in the autumn 1997 issue, the references made to society and politics remain very much similar today. (Though the unemployment rate in France, for one thing, has fallen.) The essay as it appears here is an edited version of the original.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e__\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIAN JACK was the editor of \u003ci\u003eGranta\u003c\/i\u003e from 1995 to 2008. He edited London's \u003ci\u003eIndependent on Sunday\u003c\/i\u003e from 1991 to 1995, and currently he writes a weekly column for the \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e. Jack has also served as a foreign correspondent in South Asia and is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Country Formerly Known as Great Britain\u003c\/i\u003e (Jonathan Cape, 2009).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e__\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first man to fly solo across the Atlantic and the hero of his age, Charles Lindbergh, saw France from the air on May 21, 1927. He had been flying for more than thirty hours and seen nothing but ocean since he left New York, and now the green fields and woods of Normandy were below him. Journey's end! Time for a bite! He took a sandwich from its wrapper and stretched to throw the wrapper from the cockpit. Then he looked down and decided that just wouldn't do. \"My first act,\" Lindbergh said to himself, \"will not be to sully such a beautiful garden.\" His American waste paper remained in the aircraft—scrunched, one assumes, in a ball at his feet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe French writer Jean-Marie Domenach, who died this summer, tells this story in his last book: \u003ci\u003eRegarder la France: essai sur le malaise français\u003c\/i\u003e. It is for Domenach yet another small stone in a large mountain of anecdotal evidence gathered to demonstrate the singularity of France as a state, a people, a culture and (in this case) a landscape. But, as Domenach's subtitle indicates, all isn't well with this singularity. The fields that Lindbergh flew over are larger now, the roads straighter and wider, the peasants (should Lindbergh have spotted any, bending their backs in this beautiful garden) dramatically fewer. All of these changes have happened to most other western countries as agriculture has adopted new machines and new techniques to plough out hedges and plough in chemical fertilizers, to relegate agricultural labourers to models in museums of folklore. But in none of these other countries (even England, where the countryside supplies a large part of the national idea) would rural transformation be seen as such a blow to the nation's identity. There would be nostalgia, of course, and ecological concern. In France, things go much further. Implied in Domenach's story is the notion that, had Lindbergh been flying over some other, less top-quality country (Portugal, say, or Belgium), he might have nonchalantly tossed the paper into the windstream and had a good spit at the same time. But, as General and President Charles de Gaulle was fond of saying, France is . . . France. Even Lindbergh, high up in his frail aeroplane, and with a hundred other things to worry about, could see the specialness of the place and respect it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNobody doubts that France is special; certainly not the French. It is the largest, though not the most populous country, in Europe, and was once the most powerful. Its linguistic unity and its natural boundaries—France can be seen as a hexagonal fortress with sea on three sides and mountains on two—have given it a clearer identity, a less contested nationalism, than most countries which share a continent. Its history is alive with symbols, events, heroes and slogans which have not been shuttered in to the cobwebbed past—which form part of France's grand and still unfolding story, as the French tell it to themselves. France sees itself as the birthplace of modern ideas and modern politics. The words of the American constitution are fine, but a snappier political credo than \"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity\" has still to be invented. The terms \"Left\" and \"Right\" as in left-wing and right-wing come from the seating arrangements in the National Assembly of 1789, when the pro-revolutionaries took the benches on the left side of the chamber. When Britain was manufacturing industrial and necessarily temporary objects, France was taking the lead in creating enduring, and now universal, abstractions. These ideals, which have dignified humankind, form part of France's claim to its status as a universal nation. Add them to a cultural preeminence which has lasted through most of the last and the present century—think of the French novel and French painting in the nineteenth, French film in the twentieth—and a way of living notorious for its discriminating pleasure in philosophy, love, food, drink and fashion, and France's claim to be the global model for civilization can seem unanswerable. \"Ah, the French,\" as the maxim goes on the northbound Channel ferry and the jet heading west to North America, \"they know how to \u003ci\u003elive\u003c\/i\u003e!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe paradox is that, while France has thought of itself as a tutor to the world, it has never really believed that it can be imitated. France is distinctive. It may believe, as the USA affects to believe (or simply assumes), that it is a country with values which can be franchised anywhere; but unlike perfumes, croissants and fizzy water—unlike, in fact, the Statue of Liberty—some items are not for export. There is the French soul; there is an even mistier item, \u003ci\u003ela France profonde\u003c\/i\u003e. Here normal rules do not apply. Sooner or later, in almost every area of human activity, one comes across the phrase:\u003ci\u003e l'exception française\u003c\/i\u003e. Exceptionally, France has retained several parts of its empire with little sense of post-imperial shame. Exceptionally, in the 1990s it began again to explode nuclear devices under one of these old outposts (when on British television a French government spokesman was asked why, if these tests were so safe, they were not conducted under French waters rather than in the far-away Pacific, he replied: \"But Tahiti \u003ci\u003eis\u003c\/i\u003e France\"). Exceptionally, it still regards French as the near-rival to English as the triumphant world language, when nearly four times as many people speak English (and three times as many use Spanish, and twice as many Bengali—or Arabic). Exceptionally, it is the most anti-American country in western (or for that matter eastern) Europe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNearly all of these exceptions flow from what is now the greatest exception of all: the power of the French state to regulate, subsidize, satisfy and inspire the lives and ambitions of France's fifty-eight million citizens. The urge to standardize and centralize in France predates the Revolution, but it was the precepts of the Revolution, later codified by Napoleon, which allowed French citizens to feel that they played equal parts in a grand and unifying design. There would be standard courts dispensing standard law, standard schools teaching the same French history, standard forms of local administration sitting in headquarters with \u003ci\u003eLiberté, Egalité, Fraternité\u003c\/i\u003e standardly engraved in their stone. The language would be standard despite its many regional variants, the measurements (metres, litres, kilos) also. All standards would be set by the government in Paris. The state interfered but it also sheltered, and it became one of the glories of France, inseparable from the idea of the French way of life. Today France employs five million civil servants (proportionately five times as many as the USA) and industries run by the state comprise more than a third of the French economy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe state, then, matters in France as it does in few other countries. It has never been, unlike in Britain or the USA, the bogey of the tax-paying middle classes. For one thing, it keeps a large part of the middle class in work; more than half the families in France depend on income from the state. For another, its regulations and subsidies have sustained the attractive variousnesses of France, which still produces four hundred (or a thousand; the boast varies) different kinds of cheese, and where a town of one thousand seven hundred people can contain (this is a real but typical example, from Beaujolais) three bakeries, a butcher, two grocers, a pharmacy, a jeweller's, two clothes shops, a flower shop, two hardware stores, a newsagent, two garages, several bars, two hotels and two restaurants, one of which is mentioned honourably in the Michelin guide. In Britain and North America, supermarkets and shopping malls would have closed most of them, while politicians spoke airily about the free market's great virtue of consumer choice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut—reenter \u003ci\u003ele malaise français—\u003c\/i\u003eunemployment runs at 12.5 percent (double the British figure) and the centralized political and bureaucratic elites of Paris have become deeply unpopular and sometimes corrupt. And the nation state is now retreating throughout the world as a custodian of economies and cultures, abandoning its old remits to the capricious pressures of the global market. France has many phrases for this phenomenon—\u003ci\u003ele capitalisme sauvage\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ele capitalisme dur\u003c\/i\u003e (hard), \u003ci\u003ele capitalisme Anglo-Saxon—\u003c\/i\u003eand most of them could be heard in the elections of June this year, when France ditched its right-wing government and replaced it with an alliance of Socialists and Communists. On the face of it, the Left had capitalized on France's prevailing moods of \u003ci\u003esinistrose\u003c\/i\u003e (dismalness) and \u003ci\u003emorosité \u003c\/i\u003e(gloom) by promising that the two great forces for change in French life could be resisted: that France needn't bow to Chinese wage rates or cut its public spending so that it could qualify for membership of the European Monetary Union. The Left pledged that it would create seven hundred thousand jobs, half of them funded by the state, and cut the statutory working week from forty to thirty-five hours with no reduction in earnings. In Britain, where Mrs. Thatcher expunged socialism from the politics of her Labour successors, there was mockery and also half a cheer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrance was being exceptional once again, struggling to preserve its cherished ideas of Frenchness. To the rest of the world, which has accepted globalism as an inevitability, the way things are and will be, it seemed as though its fourth-largest economy had recoiled in the face of modernity; that Fortress France was pulling up the drawbridge.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhere does French writing stand in all this The awkward truth here is that, outside France and small pockets of Francophilia, hardly anyone knows. Name six living French novelists. Name six contemporary French novels. The French, of course, blame this neglect on Anglo-Saxon ignorance and hostility, but the truth (our truth, at least) is that, in literature, France pulled up the drawbridge long ago. Saul Bellow, writing in \u003ci\u003eGranta\u003c\/i\u003e in 1984, remembered how Paris had been the capital of international culture before the Second World War and how, on his first visit in 1948, the city had still seemed \"one of the permanent settings, a theatre if you like, where the greatest problems of existence might be represented.\" Thirty years later that feeling had gone. \"Marxism, Euro-communism, Existentialism, Structuralism, Deconstructionism could not restore the potency of French civilization,\" Bellow wrote. \"Sorry about that.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eToday in France there are arguments about the purpose of writing and a movement to put the world back into the book; it hasn't escaped the French that the failure of French writing to sell abroad may have, to put it strictly in terms of the market, more to do with the producer than the consumer. Today a younger generation of writers is emerging which is more willing to look outward again. Many of these writers come from present or former French territories outside Europe, or are the children of migrants from those places. What their writing has in common is the desire to dramatize the deed rather than the thought, the story above the idea.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey reflect a France that is richer and more complicated than the beleaguered monolith of newspaper headlines, and which cannot be accommodated by old ideas of Frenchness, no matter what its government may say or do. France, we should never forget, has the largest Muslim community in Europe, between three and five million people, and Europe's largest Jewish community (about seven hundred thousand people) outside Russia. A third of France's population has ancestry from outside its borders.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBeneath the crust of its mythology, France has already changed. Why otherwise would Jean-Marie Le Pen and his anti-immigrant, anti-Europe, anti-American party, the National Front, exist And why in June would they have won 15 percent of the vote The real challenge to France is not the Anglo-Saxon world. It is to find a new and more plural identity, freed from the burden of glorious memory.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303158141157,"sku":"NP9780307474896","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307474896.jpg?v=1767734506","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/paris-isbn-9780307474896","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}