City of Light, City of Shadows: Paris in the Belle Époque (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781541647497)

A top historian offers a new history of Paris's Belle Époque, the luminous age of the Eiffel Tower and the Sacré-Coeur Basilica, but also of social unrest and violent clashes over what it meant to be French

From the wrought ironwork of the Eiffel Tower to the flourishing art nouveau movement, the Belle Époque is remembered as a golden age for Parisian culture. Beneath the veneer of elegance, however, fin de siècle Paris was a city at war with itself.

In City of Light, City of Shadows, Mike Rapport uncovers a Paris riven by social anxieties and plagued by overlapping epidemics of poverty, political extremism, and anti-Semitism. As the Sacré-Coeur and Eiffel Tower rose into the skies, redefining architecture and the Paris skyline, Paris's slums were plagued by disease and gang violence. The era, now remembered as a high point of French art and culture, was also an age of intense political violence, including anarchist bombings, organized right-wing mobs, and assassinations.

Weaving together these stories of splendor and suffering with the fabric of the city itself, the book offers a brilliant account of Paris's Belle Époque--revealing the darkness that suffused the City of Light.

Author: Mike Rapport
ISBN-10: 1541647491
ISBN-13: 9781541647497
Publisher: Basic Books
Language: English
Published: 05/14/2024
Pages: 448
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 8.80h x 6.00w x 1.60d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2024