Paris, Christmas Eve 1800. The fuse of an improvised bomb was lit, and the enormous explosion wreaked havoc. The target for this early act of terrorism was Napoleon Bonaparte, who had seized power the
In August 1785, Paris buzzed with a scandal that had everything—an eminent churchman, a female fraudster, a part-time prostitute and the hated Queen herself. Its centrepiece was the most expensi
2017 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize Winner Over a span of thirty years in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the French Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe endured natural cat
Chic, sophisticated, seductive, and enigmatic, the Parisienne possesses a je ne sais quoi which makes her difficult to define. Who or what is the Parisienne and how she is depicted in cinema is the su
Recent scholarly and popular attempts to define the Enlightenment, account for its diversity, and evaluate its historical significance suffer from a surprising lack of consensus at a time when the soc
One of AFAR magazine’s ?8 New Books You Need to Read Before Flying to France”?It’s the authors’ friendly accessibility that makes these stories so memorable.”?Christine Muhlke, The New York Times Book
"The book explores the place of the Merovingian kingdoms in Gaul within a broader Mediterranean context. Their politics and culture have mostly been interpreted in terms of a local phenomenon, but as
This book explores the mutinies in the French infantry and navy in 1919. This revolt stretched from France's intervention against the Soviet Union through to France's naval ports. This research is bas
This book looks at the period 2015-18 in French politics, a turbulent time that witnessed the apparent collapse of the old party system, the taming of populist and left-wing challenges to the Republic
Given the destruction and suffering caused by more than four years of industrialised warfare and economic hardship, scholars have tended to focus on the nationalism and hatred in the belligerent count
Following Germania and Danubia, the third installment in Simon Winder’s personal history of EuropeIn 843 AD, the three surviving grandsons of the great emperor Charlemagne met at Verdun. After years o
The dead of Paris, before the French Revolution, were most often consigned to mass graveyards that contemporaries described as terrible and terrifying, emitting "putrid miasmas" that were a threat to
A fresh, radical history of France and its place in the world that offers short, accessible articles on topics ranging from the Chauvet Cave all the way to the events of 2015. Bringing together an imp
This book examines the history of Herbert Hoover’s Commission for Relief in Belgium, which supplied humanitarian aid to the millions of civilians trapped behind German lines in Belgium and Northern Fr
