Showing titles in France

Blending narrative with analysis, Peter Davies explores a time of obscene opulence, mass starvation, and ground-breaking ideals; where the streets of Paris ran red with blood, and the numbers requiring execution precipitated the invention of the guillotine. Davies brings the subject up to date by considering the legacy of the revolution and how it continues to resonate in today’s France.

In 1799, a French Army officer was rebuilding the defenses of a fort on the banks of the Nile when he discovered an ancient stele fragment bearing a decree inscribed in three different scripts. So begins one of the most familiar tales in Egyptology - that of the Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This book draws on fresh archival evidence to provide a major new account of how the English polymath Thomas Young and the French philologist Jean-François Champollion vied to be the first to solve the riddle of the Rosetta.

In the wake of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, and Pope Pius VII shared a common goal: to reconcile the church with the state. But while they were able to work together initially, formalizing an agreement in 1801, relations between them rapidly deteriorated. In 1809, Napoleon ordered the Pope's arrest. Ambrogio Caiani provides a pioneering account of the tempestuous relationship between the emperor and his most unyielding opponent.

Today, it is difficult to imagine a living room without a sofa. When the first sofas on record were delivered in 17th-century France, the result was a radical reinvention of interior space. Symptomatic of a new age of casualness and comfort, the sofa ushered in an era known as the golden age of conversation; as the first piece of furniture designed for two, it was also considered an invitation to seduction. With the sofa came many other changes in interior space we now take for granted: private bedrooms, bathrooms, and the original living rooms.

The landmark history of France and French culture in the eighteenth-century, a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize When the apprentices of a Paris printing shop in the 1730s held a series of mock trials and then hanged all the cats they could lay their hands on, why did they find it so...

This thrilling wartime adventure tells the true story of the downed American aviators who were rescued by French resistance fighters, taken to Nazi-occupied Paris, and hidden under the very noses of the Gestapo.Escape from Paris is the true story of a small group of U.S. aviators whose four B-17...

An acclaimed portrait of Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the origins of modern conservatism and liberalism In The Great Debate, Yuval Levin explores the roots of the left/right political divide in America by examining the views of the men who best represented each side at its origin: Edmund...

Acclaimed historian Mary McAuliffe vividly recaptures the Paris of Napoleon III, Claude Monet, and Victor Hugo as Georges Haussmann tore down and rebuilt Paris into the beautiful City of Light we know today. Paris, City of Dreams traces the transformation of the City of Light during Napoleon III’s Second Empire into the beloved city of today.

A riveting true story of murder and detection in 15th-century Paris, by one of the most brilliant medievalists of his generation. On a chilly November night in 1407, Louis of Orleans was murdered by a band of masked men. The crime stunned and paralyzed France since Louis had often ruled in place...

The 18th century’s Age of Enlightenment in pre-Revolutionary France continues to fascinate us today. Steegmuller brings his scholarly talents to this collection of the letters of Mme. Louise d’Épinay, best-known for the treatment she received in Rousseau’s Confessions. Eavesdropping on the writings of this intelligent woman, the listener gains not only insights into her friendship with Italian priest-diplomat, Ferdinando Galiani, but also a glance into the life of France’s elite.

In a follow-up to the popular The New Paris, Lindsey Tramuta explores the impact that the women of Paris have had on the rapidly evolving culture of their city.

Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette shared a singularly extraordinary friendship, one involved in the making of two revolutions - and two nations. Jefferson first met Lafayette in 1781, when the young French-born general was dispatched to Virginia to assist Jefferson, then the state’s governor, in fighting off the British. The charismatic Lafayette, hungry for glory, could not have seemed more different from Jefferson, the reserved statesman.

Every year upon arriving in Plobien, the small Breton town where he spends his summers, American writer Mark Greenside picks back up where he left off with his faux-pas-filled Francophile life. Mellowed and humbled, but not daunted (OK, slightly daunted), he faces imminent concerns: What does he cook for a French person? Who has the right-of-way when entering or exiting a roundabout? Where does he pay for a parking ticket? And most dauntingly of all, when can he touch the tomatoes?

The era of the Enlightenment, which gave rise to our modern conceptions of freedom and democracy, was also the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. America, a nation founded on the principle of liberty, is also a nation built on African slavery, Native American genocide, and systematic racial discrimination. White Freedom traces the complex relationship between freedom and race from the 18th century to today, revealing how being free has meant being white.

“Nada está perdido para a França.” (De Gaulle) Foi assim, por uma transmissão radiofônica de Londres, após ver seu país invadido pelos alemães, que Charles de Gaulle convocou os franceses a lutarem pela Resistência. Ele liderou o país nos momentos mais difíceis e tornou-se herói nacional. Nos diversos conflitos dos quais participou, De Gaulle lutou, foi ferido, acabou preso e, depois, fugitivo.

Les Presses Universitaires de France et Frémeaux & Associés proposent cette biographie de Madame de Pompadour, analysée et expliquée par Cécile Berly, historienne spécialiste des femmes au XVIIIe siècle. Maîtresse puis favorite du roi Louis XV, la bourgeoise Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson est anoblie pour devenir la marquise de Pompadour.

Plongeon fulgurant au cœur de Toulouse, ce livre-audio restitue, avec une précision captivante, l’épopée d’une cité majeure du Midi: des origines celtiques aux heures romaines, de la splendeur wisigothique aux drames de la croisade albigeoise, jusqu’à l’affirmation municipale et l’essor intellectuel médiéval. On y découvre une ville-carrefour, façonnée par sa Garonne, ses remparts, ses marchés, ses ordres religieux et ses capitouls; un creuset d’arts, de droit et de foi où s’entrelacent troubadours, bâtisseurs, marchands et juristes.

Dans ce tome captivant, Élie Faure explore l'art médiéval comme une explosion de vie spirituelle et sensuelle, née du choc entre religions éthiques et instincts humains. Du panthéisme indien aux temples khmers, de la sérénité chinoise au dynamisme japonais, en passant par les mosaïques byzantines, les arabesques islamiques et les cathédrales gothiques françaises, il révèle comment l'art a transcendé dogmes et souffrances pour célébrer l'harmonie universelle.

Plongeon épique au cœur d’une petite contrée au destin brûlant, “Histoire politique et religieuse du Pays de Gex” dévoile, avec une érudition limpide, comment ce territoire entre Jura, Rhône et Genève fut sans cesse convoité, fracturé, puis recomposé par Romains, Bourguignons, empereurs germaniques, Savoie, Bernois, Genevois et rois de France.

Plongeant au cœur tourmenté d’Avignon et du Comtat Venaissin à l’ère révolutionnaire, “Histoire de la guerre civile d’Avignon et du Comtat Venaissin” de Charles Soullier déroule, avec la précision d’un chroniqueur et le souffle d’un romancier, la montée des tensions (1789–1791), l’embrasement des factions, puis l’engrenage des représailles jusqu’aux épisodes les plus sombres, dont les massacres de la Glacière. À partir de témoignages de première main, de pièces publiques et de récits croisés, l’auteur cartographie les forces en présence.