Parisians
This is the Paris you never knew. From the Revolution to the present, Graham Robb has distilled a series of astonishing true narratives, all stranger than fiction, of the lives of the great, the near-great, and the forgotten. A young artillery lieutenant, strolling through the Palais-Royal, observes disapprovingly the courtesans plying their trade. A particular woman catches his eye; nature takes its course. Later that night Napoleon writes a meticulous account of his first sexual encounter. A well-dressed woman, fleeing the Louvre, takes a wrong turn and loses her way in the nameless streets of the Left Bank. For want of a map -- there were no reliable ones at the time -- Marie-Antoinette will go to the guillotine. Baudelaire, the photographer Marville, Baron Haussmann, the real-life Mimi of La Boheme, Proust, Adolf Hitler touring the occupied capital in the company of his generals, Charles de Gaulle (who is suspected of having faked an assassination attempt in Notre Dame) -- these and many more are Robb's cast of characters, and the settings range from the quarries and catacombs beneath the streets to the grand monuments to the appalling suburbs ringing the city today. The result is a resonant, intimate history with the power of a great novel. - Jacket flap.
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What Hacker News says
- It occurs to me looking at the map that a tourist in modern day Paris would still be well-served by this network.
That thought also made me wonder how central Paris' modern metro system overlays onto this. Here's a quick little visualization: https://stirring-biscotti-a978fa.netlify.app/
If you're traveling to or interested in Paris and its history, I really enjoyed "Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris" by Graham Robb. Has some good, accessible and entertaining history relating to (among other things) the construction of the metro.
- any history book by Ben MacIntyre is a terrific read. He has written sseveral about WWII: I've read Agent Zig-Zag and Operation Mincemeat. He also wrote a good book about the spy Kim Phiulby, A Spy Among Friends. Another great book about WWII is Citizens of London by Lynne Olson. One of the best books I've read recently is Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads that fills in the gaps of history for Westerners. Jaw-dropping details on almost every page--such as the real meaning of the Italian greeting ciao ("I am your slave") because Italian ports were the ceneter of the Roaman slave trade--they had to import 450,000-500,000 per year to keep the empire humming...and the origin of the word slave from the Slavs who were captured by the red-haired Vikings as they moved south...knowns as the Russes, who became known as the Russians..
some others-- The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt The Food Explorer by Daniel Stone anything by Erik Larson but especially Isaac's Storm (about the Galveston hurricane of 1900) and In the Garden of Beasts (about the American ambassort to 1930s Nazi Germany) Travels with Herodotus and Shah of Shas by Ryszard Kapuscinski The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum Parisians by Graham Robb
- If you liked this piece, a good read is, "Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris" by Graham Robb.
