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
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.
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. 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 — Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Gide, Marie Curie, Picasso, Stravinsky, and Coco Chanel continued to hold sway, joined by Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Renoir, Salvador Dalí, and Elsa Schiaparelli.
Praise
"McAuliffe skillfully weaves together the stories of artists, writers, and politicians to create a vivid portrait of Paris on the eve of catastrophe."
"A gripping account of a city and a civilization under threat, told through the lives of the remarkable people who lived it."