List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Map of Paris, 1918–1929
Introduction
Chapter 1 Out of Darkness (1918)
Chapter 2 Going Forward (1918–1919)
Chapter 3 Versailles and Victory (1919)
Chapter 4 Making Way for the New (1919–1920)
Chapter 5 Les Années Folles (1920)
Chapter 6 Weddings, Break-ups, and Other Affairs (1921)
Chapter 7 The Lost Generation (1922)
Chapter 8 A Death in Paris (1923)
Chapter 9 Americans in Paris (1924)
Chapter 10 You’ve Come A Long Way From St. Louis (1925)
Chapter 11 All That Jazz (1926)
Chapter 12 Sophisticated Lady (1927)
Chapter 13 Cocktails, Darling? (1928)
Chapter 14 The Bubble Bursts (1929)
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Mary McAuliffe holds a PhD in history from the University of Maryland, has taught at several universities, and has lectured at the Smithsonian Institution. She has traveled extensively in France, and for many years she was a regular contributor to Paris Notes. Her books include Dawn of the Belle Epoque, Twilight of the Belle Epoque, Clash of Crowns, and Paris Discovered. She lives in Manhattan with her husband.
A vivid chronicle of 10 roiling years in Paris.Historian McAuliffe
. . . takes up where her last book left off, in 1918, to focus on
the city's cultural life after World War I. What Americans called
the Roaring '20s, the French termed les Années folles, "the Crazy
Years," which the author deems an apt epithet for the "what the
hell" attitude that pervaded the city's upper class. But there was
more to life in Paris than "endless parties and late-night jazz
clubs." Organizing the book chronologically, McAuliffe portrays a
city bursting with creativity in art, music, dance, fashion,
architecture, and literature. Drawing on memoirs, biographies, and
the many histories of the period, she follows an abundant and
diverse cast of characters, creating brief vignettes about the
yearly evolution of their lives and careers. Besides the usual
suspects found in any history of the Lost Generation—Hemingway,
Fitzgerald, Stein, Picasso, Pound, Man Ray, Kiki of Montparnasse,
and Cocteau, to name a few—the author includes politicians (de
Gaulle, Clemenceau, Pétain) and innovators in fields other than the
arts, such as cosmetics manufacturers Helena Rubinstein and
François Coty; architect Charles Jeanneret, who became famous as Le
Corbusier; Marie Curie; couturiers Paul Poiret and, of course, Coco
Chanel; and automotive giants Renault, Peugeot, and Citroën. André
Citroën, writes McAuliffe, was determined to be the French Henry
Ford; he "was not interested in creating a plaything for the rich.
He wanted to make useful car for the middle class," the equivalent
of Ford's Model T. Within a year of production, thousands of
Citroëns were on the road. By 1925, Citroën was the fourth-largest
auto company in the world, "behind only the Americans—Ford, General
Motors, and Chrysler." Fast-paced and richly detailed, the
narrative nevertheless reprises many well-known stories. McAuliffe
creates an expansive landscape in her examination of a
transformative decade.
*Kirkus*
McAuliffe follows Dawn of the Belle Epoque with another breezy,
brisk, well-researched work about Paris, this time focusing on the
dazzling figures populating the once-denigrated Paris neighborhood
of Montparnasse at its mesmerizing peak. ‘The Lost Generation’ of
expat writers and artists helped transform Montparnasse into a
culturally rich, tumultuous community where the luminous and daring
Josephine Baker danced, Gertrude Stein kvetched about James Joyce,
and the taxi horns provided inspiration for George Gershwin. Not
surprisingly, the area’s notoriety only grew with the proliferation
of the expats and artists’ casual and often rash affairs, drug use
(especially Jean Cocteau’s opium addiction), and other
self-indulgent behaviors aided by reckless spending. Weaving in key
advancements in cultural production (music, architecture, theater,
film) and technological evolution in the automobile industry,
McAuliffe smartly keeps her eye on political events in Paris as
well as in central Europe, especially the increasing popularity of
far-right movements and Charles de Gaulle’s rise in the French
military. McAuliffe recreates a lush, gorgeous world filled with
talented, yet immensely flawed innovators who experienced les
années folles (‘the crazy years’) as a rare escape into creativity,
glamor, and respite from the sobering reality of a world prone to
devastating wars.
*Publishers Weekly*
What do James Joyce, Marie Curie, Sylvia Beach, Igor Stravinsky,
and Man Ray have in common? Along with those named in the title,
they are among the cast of characters McAuliffe (Twilight of the
Belle Époque, 2014) portrays in her tour of Les années folles, the
Golden Twenties in the City of Light. She transports us to
Montparnasse, populated by artists, writers, musicians, tourists,
and an assortment of larger-than-life personalities whose “spirit .
. . flowed on a river of coffee, alcohol, and chat.” Beginning with
the end of WWI, McAuliffe carefully chronicles each year of that
dynamic decade that saw change on so many fronts, including
fashion, art, music, literature, and social behavior. She weaves
together an array of stories of well-known as well as some
lesser-known individuals to create a vibrant tapestry shot through
with color, chaos, and creativity. Graced with period photographs
and bolstered with an impressive selection of sources, When Paris
Sizzled will captivate anyone who has wondered just what the Lost
Generation was up to.
*Booklist*
When Paris Sizzled delivers an expansive and wonderfully engaging
account of the spirited characters who made the Left Bank of Paris
the center of the creative world.
*The Huffington Post*
McAuliffe, the author of several books about Paris, draws on the
troves of material left behind by the era’s great writers and
expats to bring the city to life in a kind of
you-are-here-with-Cocteau-and-Chanel tableau vivant.
*The New York Times*
What's most impressive is the way [McAuliffe] shows both how and
why the 1920s in Paris served as a magnificent interlude between
two of the century's most iconic disasters. . . . [She] avoids
romantic myths of the Jazz Age, focusing on how artists struggled
against a backdrop of anti-Semitism, poverty and the rise of
fascism.
*Shelf Awareness*
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