France Memoir

A dazzling biography of the French literary superstar Colette, who is also the subject of a major motion picture. “A fine and intelligent biography of Colette, with her long tumultuous life and the great body of her work scrupulously considered and presented with style.”—The New York...

Zinédine Zidane est le Français le plus célèbre au monde, mais qui est-il vraiment ? Un être secret qui cultive la discrétion, un homme adulé qui se préserve et protège les siens, une star au destin exceptionnel qui reste un type normal. A travers dix-huit années d'échanges et de confessions exclusives avec le joueur devenu entraîneur.

“[Makes] the very convincing case that, until and unless there is a full accounting for what happened with Donald Trump, 2020 is not over and never will be.” —The New Yorker “Riveting…we can never be reminded too often to never forget.” —The Wall Street Journal Journalist...

On September 20, 1940, one of the most famous European art dealers disembarked in New York, one of hundreds of Jewish refugees fleeing Vichy, France. Leaving behind his beloved Paris gallery, Paul Rosenberg had managed to save his family, but his paintings - modern masterpieces by Cézanne, Monet, Sisley, and others - were not so fortunate. As he fled, dozens of works were seized by Nazi forces, and the art dealer's own legacy was eradicated.

Read Kathleen Flinn's posts on the Penguin Blog. This is the funny and inspiring account of Kathleen Flinn’s struggle in a stew of hot-tempered chefs, competitive classmates, her own “wretchedly inadequate” French, and the basics of French cuisine. Flinn was a thirty-six-year-old middle...

In the wake of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, and Pope Pius VII shared a common goal: to reconcile the church with the state. But while they were able to work together initially, formalizing an agreement in 1801, relations between them rapidly deteriorated. In 1809, Napoleon ordered the Pope's arrest. Ambrogio Caiani provides a pioneering account of the tempestuous relationship between the emperor and his most unyielding opponent.

"We are all travelers in the 'wilderness of the world' - travelers with a donkey." So Robert Louis Stevenson wrote to a friend on completing this enchanting account of a journey in rural France in 1878. Alone with his pack-donkey Modestine, and showing total disregard for discomfort, Stevenson relishes to the full his walking tour of the Cevennes.

Growing up in Beverly Hills with two famous uncles—a cosmetics magnate and a well-connected mobster—eventually led Ilene Médecin to a romantic and glamorous life as the American First Lady of Nice and the French Riviera. Arrested follows Ilene through her marriage to Jacques Médecin, a Medici Count fondly known as "King Jacquou," who was the last scion of a century old political dynasty.

The Man in the Iron Mask has all the hallmarks of a thrilling adventure story: a glamorous and all-powerful king, ambitious ministers, a cruel and despotic jailor, dark and sinister dungeons - and a secret prisoner. It is easy for forget that this story, made famous by Alexandre Dumas, is that of a real person, Eustache Danger, who spent more than 30 years in the prison system of Louis XIV’s France - never to be freed. This narrative brings to life the true story of this mysterious man and follows his journey through four prisons and across decades.

Comtesse Valtesse de la Bigne was painted by Édouard Manet and inspired Émile Zola, who immortalized her in his scandalous novel Nana. Her rumored affairs with Napoleon III and the future King Edward VII kept gossip columns full. But her glamorous existence hid a dark secret: She was no comtesse. She was born into abject poverty, raised on a squalid backstreet among the dregs of Parisian society. Yet she transformed herself into an enchantress.

Jean Antoinette Poussin, the woman who would become known as Madame de Pompadour, was a middle-class girl of uncertain parenthood who became one of many in a long line of King Louis XV’s mistresses before she died at the age of 42. While none of that stands out on its own when it comes to French history and royalty, historians have labeled her “no ordinary king’s mistress.... She made and unmade ministers, she selected ambassadors, she appointed generals, [and] she conferred pensions and places."

An NPR Best Book of 2017 Heiress to the nearly forty-billion-dollar L’Oréal fortune, Liliane Bettencourt was the world’s richest woman and the fourteenth wealthiest person. But her gilded life took a dark yet fascinating turn in the past decade. At ninety-four, she was embroiled in what has...

Les Presses Universitaires de France et Frémeaux & Associés proposent cette biographie d'Aliénor d'Aquitaine, analysée et expliquée par Martin Aurell, professeur d'histoire du Moyen-Age à l'Université de Poitiers, Directeur du Centre d'Études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale et directeur de la revue Cahiers de civilisation médiévale. Martin Aurell dresse le portrait d'une femme exceptionnelle aux multiples facettes.

This compelling book begins on the 2nd of August 1793, the day Marie Antoinette was torn from her family's arms and escorted from the Temple to the Conciergerie, a thick-walled fortress turned prison. It was also known as the "waiting room for the guillotine" because prisoners only spent a day or two here before their conviction and subsequent execution. The ex-queen surely knew her days were numbered, but she could never have known that two and a half months would pass before she would finally stand trial and be convicted.

A language barrier is no match for love. Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early thirties, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier—a surprising turn of events for someone who didn’t have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love...

Raised in a lush suburb of 1920s Paris, Noor Inayat Khan was an introspective musician and writer, dedicated to her family and to her father’s spiritual values of harmony, beauty, and tolerance. She did not seem destined for wartime heroism. Yet, faced with the evils of Nazi violence and the German occupation of France, Noor joined the British Special Operations Executive and trained in espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance. For crucial months of the war, Noor was the only wireless operator in France sending critical information to London.

At the age of 17, Adolfo Kaminsky had narrowly escaped deportation to Auschwitz and was living in Nazi-occupied Paris, using forged documents to hide in plain sight. Due to his expert knowledge of dyes and his ability to masterfully reproduce official documents with an artistic eye, he was recruited to join the Jewish underground. He soon became the primary forger for the Resistance in Paris, working tirelessly with his network to create papers that would save an estimated 14,000 men, women, and children from certain death.

Set in Provence, London, and New York, this is a daughter’s wonderfully evocative and witty memoir of her mother and stepfather—Dee Wells, the glamorous and rebellious American journalist, and A. J. Ayer, the celebrated and worldly Oxford philosopher—and the life they lived at the center of absolutely everything.

L'opposition entre de Gaulle et Mitterrand met dos à dos un homme qui lutte contre l'effondrement d'une civilisation et un individu qui se moque que celle-ci disparaisse pourvu qu'il puisse vivre dans ses ruines à la façon d'un satrape. Le premier donne sa vie pour sauver la France ; le second donne la France pour sauver sa vie. L'un veut une France forte, grande et puissante, à même d'inspirer une Europe des patries ; l'autre la veut faible, petite et impuissante, digérée par l'Europe du capitalisme. L'un ressuscite Caton ; l'autre réincarne Néron.

In many ways it is fitting that Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) is one of the best known figures of the French Revolution. The early years of the Revolution were fueled by Enlightenment ideals, seeking the social overthrow of the caste system that gave the royalty and aristocracy decisive advantages over the lower classes. Few were as vocal in their support of Enlightenment ideals as Robespierre. But the Reign of Terror became the most memorable aspect of the Revolution, and Robespierre's position made him the Reign of Terror's instrumental figure.