From 1905 to 1930, Paris was the magnetic center for radical innovation and experiment, the Mecca for creative talents. On-camera, dramatic and historic moments are recalled by participants in these legendary events e.g. Marc Chagall, Igor Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau, Aaron Copland, and many more. Traces who came to Paris and why, whom they met, what they made there, and how being in Paris transformed them and their work.

"It's the summer of 1922, and nineteen-year-old Paulien Mertens finds herself in Paris -- broke, disowned, and completely alone. Everyone in Belgium, including her own family, believes she stole millions in a sophisticated con game perpetrated by her then-fiance, George Everard. To protect herself from the law and the wrath of those who lost everything, she creates a new identity, a Frenchwoman named Vivienne Gregsby, and sets out to recover her father's...

"A sweeping and stunning novel what happened to the poet Elizabeth Bishop during three life-changing weeks she spent in Paris amidst the imminent threat of World War II. June 1937. Elizabeth Bishop, still only a young woman and not yet one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century, arrives in Paris with her college roommate. They are in search of an escape, and inspiration, far from the protective world of Vassar College where they are...

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. It is his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, filled with irreverent portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft. It is a literary feast, brilliantly evoking the exuberant mood of Paris...

"What did it feel like to be a woman living in Paris from 1939 to 1949? These were years of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation and secrets until -- finally -- renewal and retribution. Even at the darkest moments of Occupation, with the Swastika flying from the Eiffel Tower and pet dogs abandoned howling on the streets, glamour was ever present. French women wore lipstick. Why? It was women more than men who came face to face with the German...

In the winter of 1910, the river that brought life to Paris quickly became a force of destruction. Torrential rainfall saturated the soil, and faulty engineering created a perfect storm of conditions that soon drowned Parisian streets, homes, businesses, and museums. The city seemed to have lost its battle with the elements. Given the Parisians' history of deep-seated social, religious, and political strife, it was questionable whether they could...

In The Invention of Paris, radical author and publisher Eric Hazan takes the reader on an exciting and historically rich tour through the construction of Paris, exploring the places and struggles that have marked its growth. Concentrating both on the literary and cultural representations of the city, as well as riots, rebellions and revolutions--throughout the nineteenth century and up until 1968--Hazan acts as a guide who is simultaneously personal...

American academic Trevor Stratton discovers a box full of artifacts from World War I as he settles into his new office in Paris. The pictures, letters, and objects in the box relate to the life of Louise Brunet, a feisty, charming Frenchwoman who lived through both World Wars. As Trevor examines and documents the relics the box offers up, he begins to imagine the story of Louise Brunet's life: her love for a cousin who died in the war, her marriage...

Brings to life the true story of an American doctor and his family in Paris, and his heroic espionage efforts during World War II. Exclusive Avenue Foch was Paris's hotbed of spies, secret police, informers, and Vichy collaborators. So when the couple at number 11-- American physician Sumner Jackson and his Swiss-born wife Toquette-- joined the French Resistance, they knew the stakes were extraordinarily high. They would be risking not only their...