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Chargement... Paris Babylon: The Story of the Paris Communepar Rupert Christiansen
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Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. 4323. Paris Babylon The Story of the Paris Commune, by Rupert Christiansen (read 4 June 2007) I read Alistair Horne's The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71 on May 12, 1966, and felt I did not need to know more about those events, and furthermore I felt that Horne's book was tedious in parts. But I decided to read this book, which is not a standard history in the vein of Horne's book, but is I thought a livelier account, and actually sets the stage for the momentous events after July 1870 in a more interesting way. Not only does this book tell well the story of how the war came about--surely the dumbest move in 19th century history was the declaration of war by France against Germany--but tells of the subsequent events in a novel and unorthodox way. It makes for a very readable account, and I enjoyed it more than reading Horne's excellent account. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
As Christiansen illustrates with marvelous immediacy, the carnival facade of the Second Empire, presided over by the aging libertine Louis Napoleon and his unpopular fashion plate of a wife, the Empress Eugenie, masked an empty soul. The Empire may have been destined to collapse under the weight of its own corruption, but in the meantime there was fun to be had and money to be made. A genius of self-promotion, Louis Napoleon managed to sustain his reign of "quiet tyranny" more by propaganda than by active repression. Christiansen begins his account of the tottering Empire with a wonderfully gossipy description of Louis Napoleon's massive (and hugely boring) hunting parties at Compiegne. From there he moves on to Paris, chronicling everything from its fervor for shopping, its gourmandise, and its anxieties about sex to its legendary artists, who included Baudelaire, Monet, Degas, Offenbach, and Zola.
But this dazzling city, rebuilt by the brilliant and ruthless social engineer Baron Haussmann to showcase the splendors of the Second Empire - its grands magasins, grands boulevards, and grandes horizontales (as the famous courtesans of the day were called) - was soon to be wracked by the Franco-Prussian War, the five-month Siege of Paris and the bloody civil war that followed it, and the subsequent emergence of the Commune. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)944.0812History and Geography Europe France and region France Third republic 1870- Third Republic 1870-1945 ; XXth Century 1870-1899Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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For readers new to the subject, this book provides a lively and fair overview of events, with bibliographic notes for those who want to understand more. And for anyone, its anecdotes and portraits, e.g. of the Empress Eugénie and of the pathetic and mysteriously uncommunicative Emperor, or Haussmann and even of the young and insolent Rimbaud (who may or may not have got to Paris during the Commune — we don't really know) make it a lively and suggestive addition to the bibliography. ( )