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Praise for Paris, City of Dreams
"Her reputation as a social and literary historian of Paris already cemented, McAuliffe (Paris on the Brink, 2018, When Paris Sizzled, 2016) returns with a detailed history of the City of Light and its nineteenth-century transformation into the sophisticated, envied capital. Its wide boulevards, monumental architecture, health-improving sewers and aqueducts, and efficient transportation systems began in ernest in the 1850's under Napoleon III and his chief urban planner, Georges-Eugene Haussmann. Before becoming Emperor, Louis Napoleon in his London exile already had formulated plans for extending broad avenues west of the Louvre. With Haussmann's skills at planning and at creating political will to action, the new Emperor created substantial parks on the city's outskirts and built conveniently situated train stations for the novel technology of rail travel. Razing tenements and codifying design for new apartment buildings, Haussmann constructed the cityscapes of Paris so beloved in the twentieth century. Urban elegance came at the cost of democratic rule as the former republic hardened into autocracy. Armhair historians in particular will appreciate McAuliffe's readable yet detailed history supplemented with illustrations and bibliography.
- Mark Knoblauch, Booklist starred review
Paris, City of Dreams traces the transformation of the City of Light during Napoleon III's Second Empire into the beloved city of today. Together, Napoleon III and his right-hand man, Georges Haussmann, completely rebuilt Paris in less than two decades—a breathtaking achievement made possible not only by the emperor's vision and Haussmann's determination, but by the regime's unrelenting authoritarianism, augmented by the booming economy that Napoleon fostered.
Yet, a number of Parisians refused to comply with the restrictions that censorship and entrenched institutional taste imposed. Mary McAuliffe follows the lives of artists such as Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Claude Monet, as well as writers such as Emile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, and the poet Charles Baudelaire, while from exile, Victor Hugo continued to fire literary broadsides at the emperor he detested.
McAuliffe brings to life a pivotal era encompassing not only the physical restructuring of Paris, but also the innovative forms of banking and moneylending that financed industrialization as well as the city's transformation. This in turn created new wealth and flaunted excess, even while producing extreme poverty. More deeply, change was occurring in the way people looked at and understood the world around them, given the new ease of transportation and communication, the popularization of photography, and the emergence of what would soon be known as Impressionism in art and Naturalism and Realism in literature—artistic yearnings that would flower in the Belle Epoque.
Napoleon III, whose reign abruptly ended after he led France into a devastating war against Germany, has been forgotten. But the Paris that he created has endured, brought to vivid life through McAuliffe's rich illustrations and evocative narrative.
Also by Mary McAuliffe
Paris on the Brink
The 1930s Paris of Jean Renoir, Salvador Dalí, Simone de Beauvoir, André Gide, Sylvia Beach, Léon Blum, and Their Friends
By Mary McAuliffe
Paris, City of Dreams
Napoléon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Creation of Paris
By Mary McAuliffe
Paris on the Brink vividly portrays the City of Light during the tumultuous 1930s, from the Wall Street Crash of 1929 to war and German Occupation. This was a dangerous and turbulent decade, during which workers flexed their economic muscle and their opponents struck back with increasing violence. As the divide between haves and have-nots widened, so did the political split between left and right, with animosities exploding into brutal clashes, intensified by the paramilitary leagues of the extreme right. Throughout, Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini escalated the increasingly hazardous international environment, while the civil war in Spain added to the instability of the times.
Yet throughout the decade, Paris remained at the center of cultural creativity. Major figures on the Paris scene, such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, André Gide, Marie Curie, Picasso, Stravinsky, and Coco Chanel continued to hold sway, in addition to Josephine Baker, Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, Man Ray, and Le Corbusier. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre could now be seen at their favorite cafés, while Jean Renoir, Salvador Dalí, and Elsa Schiaparelli came to prominence, along with France’s first Socialist prime minister, Léon Blum.
Despite the decade’s creativity and glamour, it remained a difficult and dangerous time, and Parisians responded with growing nativism and anti-Semitism, while relying on their Maginot Line to protect them from external harm. Through rich illustrations and evocative narrative, Mary McAuliffe brings this extraordinary era to life.
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
Special Offer
Hardback publishing in May 2020 • 344 pages
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Praise for Paris on the Brink
"Paris on the Brink vividly evokes the cultural and political life of Paris during the 1930s. The cast of characters...mingle in a bright narrative that wheels from portrait to portrait like a whirligig overshadowed by the lengthening specter of war. McAuliffe has written a truly absorbing book." - Frederick Brown, authorThe Embrace of Unreason
"Rich and fascinating, this cleverly woven tapestry of stories from the turbulent 1930s shows how the political and artistic worlds of Paris came together in the powerful march of history. Paris on the Brink delivers a genuinely engaging and dramatic account of a profoundly significant era."
- Victoria Best, author An Introduction to Twentieth-Century French Literature
"A breezy, rollicking and vastly entertaining popular history of the international cultural and intellectual life of Paris during the troubled decade just before the Second World War."
- Laird Easton, author The Red Count: The Life and Times of Harry Kessler