Few locales and epochs sound more intriguing than Paris, France, in the sizzling 1920s. Baxter (We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light; The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris; Chronicles of Old Paris) crafted 25 compelling stories that evoke les annes folles, or "crazy years" when American expatriates flocked to the City of Light to partake in romance, recreational drugs, and gender-bending fashions, while rubbing elbows with luminaries from the art world. Larger-than-life and unconventional characters include author and art connoisseur Gertrude Stein, artist Pablo Picasso, ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, photographer Man Ray, writers F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, jazz singer Ada "Bricktop" Smith, poet Ezra Pound, and many others. This richly illustrated and beautifully formatted work also includes four walking tours of the Seine Left Bank, the path of Ernest Hemingway from the Latin Quarter and beyond, Montparnasse, and Trocadero. Francophiles and libertines alike will savor this book as they explore Paris and walk in the footsteps of so many notable and talented individuals. The index and detailed table of contents assist with finding specific information. VERDICT For larger travel collections and readers who enjoy lesser-known details of a particular travel destination. Elizabeth Connor, Daniel Lib., The Citadel, Military Coll. of South Carolina, CharlestonLibrary Journal Booksmack! LJXpress Prepub --From Library Review Book Verdict
Paris, especially the Paris between the two world wars, continues to resonate with many people around the globe. The city has had many golden ages but probably none as famous as the 1920s: the Paris of the Lost Generation. This is the Paris of Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds, of Gertrude Stein and so many others, when the City of Light was a veritable living museum of cultural activity: literature, music, art, dance. It was a time when surrealism and cubism flourished, when small presses flourished and when conversation flowed in the city's countless cafes. Cafes, in fact, were the places not only to meet but also, notes the book's author, John Baxter, "to gossip, to plot, to seduce. ..." A few even wrote in them (Hemingway composed some of his short stories and a portion of "The Sun Also Rises" in his famous haunts). Given the rich literary history of 1920s Paris, it seems only right that Baxter devotes an entire chapter to Sylvia Beach (whom he calls "the first lady of Bohemia") and her famous bookstore, Shakespeare and Company (its modern film equivalent appears in Richard Linklater's "Before Sunset" and Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris"). Beach, the American daughter of a Presbyterian minister, not only founded and ran the English-language bookstore, she also published James Joyce's controversial novel "Ulysses" because of its risque subject matter, publishers in the U.S. and Britain steered clear of it. Another chapter is devoted to the bob. Women who cut their hair, Baxter reminds us, were participating in a scandalous act of rebellion, for to bob one's hair "expressed contempt not only for style but the entire social order." Other chapters are devoted to Josephine Baker's hot jazz moves, opium and absinthe, American songwriters in Paris (including George Gershwin and Cole Porter) and the little-known yet fascinating Harry Crosby, a movie-star handsome self-destructive publisher obsessed with death. Some, like Beach, found him delightful; others, not so much (Edith Wharton, for one, dismissed him as a "sort of half-crazed cad.") --Chicago Tribune
John Baxter is an Australian-born writer, journalist, and filmmaker, who has called Paris home since 1989. He is the author of numerous books including the autobiographical Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas, We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light, The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris, and Chronicles of Old Paris.