"In the tradition of "Bringing up Bebe" and "French Toast," Cathy Yandell's "The French Art of Living Well" is a delightful look at French culture, from literature to cuisine to humor and more, showing how the French have captured that magic elixir known as joie de vivre. What is joie de vivre, and why is it a fundamentally French concept? In search of those ineffable qualities that make up the joy of living, this lively book takes readers on a voyage...

"A top historian offers a new history of Paris's Belle Époque, the luminous age of the Eiffel Tower and the Sacré-Cœur 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...

"The French may not have invented love but they perfected it, and the laboratory in which they did so was Paris. James Joyce called the city "a lamp for lovers, hung in the wood of the world." From medieval times, Paris has drawn those who wish to experience the limits of love-intellectual, spiritual, carnal. In Love Is in the Air of Paris John Baxter turns the spotlight on some of them, from the medieval troubadors who seduced court ladies with flowery...