Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [29]
Speak the Culture: France: Be Fluent in French Life and Culture (Thorogood, London, 2008). Speak the Culture (speaktheculture.co.uk) is a new series that’s terrific, and the France edition was the debut title in the series. History, society, and lifestyle; literature and philosophy; art and architecture; cinema, photography, and fashion; music and drama; food and drink; media and sport—these are all covered impressively well, “so that you might get to know the country as one of its own citizens.”
Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past in three volumes, Volume I: Conflicts and Visions (1996), Volume II: Traditions (1997), Volume III: Symbols (1998), Pierre Nora (Columbia University Press). Originally published in France in seven volumes as Les Lieux de mémoire (Places of Memory), this stunning collection is easily at the top of my de rigueur reading list. The series is a singular publishing event, and was hailed by the Times Literary Supplement in London as “a magisterial attempt to define what it is to be French.”
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The Road from the Past: Traveling Through History in France, Ina Caro (Nan A. Talese, 1994). What a grand and sensible plan Caro presents in her marvelous book: travel through France in a “time machine” (a car), from Provence to Paris, chronologically, and experience numerous centuries of French history in one trip. I envy her and her husband, Robert Caro (the award-winning biographer of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson), for making such an unforgettable journey. As we progress chronologically, we visit the sites she has selected, which best represent a particular age and are also the most beautiful examples within each historical period. Seeing each period separately, and then all of them together in Paris, is “an incomparable experience,” as she concludes.
Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French, Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow (Sourcebooks, 2003). The husband and wife authors of this excellent book reveal new insights about the French on nearly every page, and I consider this de rigueur reading for every visitor to France. Nadeau and Barlow went to live in Paris for two years as correspondents for the New Hampshire–based Institute of Current World Affairs. They were focusing on globalization, specifically why the French were (seemingly) resisting globalization. But after one year, they realized that asking why the French were resisting globalization “was the wrong question about the right topic. The French were globalizing in their own way. But France needed to be understood in its own terms.” Their first breakthrough in reaching this fact was that it’s impossible to separate the past from the present in France. The French live very modern lives, but simultaneously they hold on to respected traditions, and they have proved that this works. Roquefort cheese is still made in caves according to a tradition that dates back twelve centuries; Napoléon introduced the Civil Code, which is currently used by most European nations; the metric system, high-speed trains, and the Concorde were developed in France; fourteenth-century châteaux and cutting-edge architecture both have a home in France; and when you make a purchase at just about any kind of shop, the staff will carefully and painstakingly wrap it up like a gift, even if it isn’t and even if there is a long line of customers behind you. Plenty more examples abound. Read this book and discover more, as well as a whole lot else about France and the French.
Travel + Leisure’s Unexpected France (Dorling Kindersley, 2007). This is an anthology of articles that have appeared in Travel + Leisure over the years, introduced by editor in chief Nancy Novogrod. (A separate volume on Italy has been published