Paris: Capital of the World - Hardcover

Patrice Higonnet is Robert Walton Goelet Professor of French History, Harvard University.

In his new book...Higonnet looks back, to a time when the city was, arguably, the capital of it all...Higonnet's discussions of Paris as a city of revolution, or of the social alienation modernity brought to Parisians...are compelling. Such historical depth gives weight to the experience of anyone drawn to modern Paris, once or a dozen times. (Tom Haines Boston Globe 2002-09-01)

Original and illuminating...Higonnet draws a fresh social, cultural and political portrait of Paris from the mid-18th century through the 19th century, augmented by some looks back and forward. Higonnet manages to be both intensely intellectual and deftly vivid as he escorts readers through a very wide range of reading...[He] appears to have missed nothing that touched or was touched by Paris...In passing, his eye takes in clothes, gastronomy, street names and panoramas...In a remarkably readable translation, [Higonnet] achieves a seamless synthesis between the myth and the history of modern Paris. (Publishers Weekly 2002-09-09)

This is a complex work of cultural and intellectual history...Higonnet has drawn from a vast array of sources to produce an "urban biography" of Paris from the mid-18th century to World War II. The result is not a standard chronological and political narrative but a history of how the city has been seen, remembered, conceived, and visualized. (Marie Marmo Mullaney Library Journal 2002-09-15)

This beautifully produced study of Paris--elegant layout, many illustrations--adopts a "mythic" approach to the city's tumultuous, many-faceted past...[This] is the kind of history of Paris we might expect from a Roland Barthes (cf. Mythologiques) or Walter Benjamin (cf. The Arcades Project). If this prospect excites you, here is your book. (Michael Dirda Washington Post 2002-11-10)

Unobtrusively learned master of ceremonies, [Higonnet] draws on a vast knowledge of the culture and history of the 19th century. He misses very little: gastronomy and cafes, Haussman's urban facelift, museums and stations, the Parisienne, "le tout Paris", modernism and its enemies...Higonnet's high-octane thesis of an "inauthentic" but powerful mythic residue is seductive. (David Coward Independent Magazine 2002-12-21)

Higonnet's [book], with its cream-and-blue cloth binding, wide margins, elegant typeface and generous illustrations, has a clear edge in belle époque opulence. Higonnet's intention is to explore the myths of Paris. He focuses on well over a dozen familiar and less familiar themes--including revolution, crime, the self, la parisienne, literature, art, alienation and pleasure--that compose the city's heady mythic cocktail. His wide learning is worn lightly, and his technique is a pointilliste application of quotations, incidents and images. (Robert Tombs Times Literary Supplement 2002-11-22)

Already known for his incisive books on eighteenth-century France and the French Revolution, Higonnet will now be celebrated as the author of a beautifully produced work on the Paris of a century ago....All Francophiles will be enriched by this book and grateful to both the author and his perfect translator. A rich and intelligent tour of Paris by an erudite guide with an acerbic, playful mind and a passionate heart. (Stanley Hoffman Foreign Affairs 2003-03-01)