A top historian offers a new history of Paris's Belle poque, the luminous age of the Eiffel Tower and the Sacr-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 poque is remembered as a golden age for Parisian culture. Beneath the veneer of elegance, however, fin de sicle 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 Sacr-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 poque--revealing the darkness that suffused the City of Light.
A top historian offers a new history of Paris's Belle poque, the luminous age of the Eiffel Tower and the Sacr-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 poque is remembered as a golden age for Parisian culture. Beneath the veneer of elegance, however, fin de sicle 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 Sacr-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 poque--revealing the darkness that suffused the City of Light.
