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.

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.

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.”

When Paris became the ultimate destination city.

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.

A “thorough and perceptive” portrait of the not-so-famous expatriates of the City of Light (The Wall Street Journal). History may remember the American artists, writers, and musicians of the Left Bank best, but the reality is that there were many more American businessmen, socialites, manufacturers’ representatives, and lawyers living on the other side of the River Seine. Be they newly minted American countesses married to foreigners with impressive titles or American soldiers who had settled in France after World War I with their French wives, they provide a new view of the notion of expatriates. Historian Nancy L. Green introduces us for the first time to a long-forgotten part of the American overseas population—predecessors to today’s expats—while exploring the politics of citizenship and the business relationships, love lives, and wealth (or in some cases, poverty) of Americans who staked their claim to the City of Light. The Other Americans in Paris shows that elite migration is a part of migration, and that debates over Americanization have deep roots in the twentieth century.

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