The Secret Life of France PDF Download

Author: Lucy Wadham
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571252257
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
At the age of eighteen Lucy Wadham ran away from English boys and into the arms of a Frenchman. Twenty-five years later, having married in a French Catholic Church, put her children through the French educational system and divorced in a French court of law, Wadham is perfectly placed to explore the differences between Britain and France. Using both her personal experiences and the lessons of French history and culture, she examines every aspect of French life - from sex and adultery to money, happiness, race and politics - in this funny and engrossing account of our most intriguing neighbour.

Author: Stephen Clarke
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453243577
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
A hilarious insider’s guide to Paris by the author of 1000 Years of Annoying the French: “Clarke’s eye for detail is terrific” (The Washington Post). Stephen Clarke may have adopted Paris as his home, but he still has an Englishman’s eye for the people, cafés, art, sidewalks, food, fashion, and romance that make Paris a one-of-a-kind city. This irreverent outsider-turned-insider guide shares local savoir faire, from how to separate the good restaurants from the bad to navigating the baffling Métro system. It also provides invaluable insights into the etiquette of public urination and the best ways to experience Parisian life without annoying the Parisians (a truly delicate art). Clarke’s witty and expert tour of the city leaves no boulevard unexplored—even those that might be better left alone.

Author: Andrew Hussey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608192377
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 696

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Book Description
If Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon described daily life in contemporary Paris, this book describes daily life in Paris throughout its history: a history of the city from the point of view of the Parisians themselves. Paris captures everyone's imaginations: It's a backdrop for Proust's fictional pederast, Robert Doisneau's photographic kiss, and Edith Piaf's serenaded soldier-lovers; a home as much to romance and love poems as to prostitution and opium dens. The many pieces of the city coexist, each one as real as the next. What's more, the conflicted identity of the city is visible everywhere-between cobblestones, in bars, on the métro. In this lively and lucid volume, Andrew Hussey brings to life the urchins and artists who've left their marks on the city, filling in the gaps of a history that affected the disenfranchised as much as the nobility. Paris: The Secret History ranges across centuries, movements, and cultural and political beliefs, from Napoleon's overcrowded cemeteries to Balzac's nocturnal flight from his debts. For Hussey, Paris is a city whose long and conflicted history continues to thrive and change. The book's is a picaresque journey through royal palaces, brothels, and sidewalk cafés, uncovering the rich, exotic, and often lurid history of the world's most beloved city.

Author: Jeremy Whittle
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1409077322
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Even the biggest cycling fan can one day wake up to find that he has lost his faith Bad Blood is the story of Jeremy Whittle's journey from unquestioning fan to Tour de France insider and confirmed sceptic. It's about broken friendships and a sport divided; about having to choose sides in the war against doping; about how galloping greed and corporate opportunism have led the Tour de France to the brink of destruction. Part personal memoir, part devastating exposé of a sport torn apart by drugs and scandal, Bad Blood is a love letter to one man's past, and a warning to cycling's future. ‘Whatever you think about doping, you must read this book ... Well-balanced, considered, compelling’ Rouleur Shortlisted for the 2008 William Hill Sports Book of the Year

Author: Samantha Vérant
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984806998
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
A disgraced chef rediscovers her passion for food and her roots in this stunning novel rich in culture and full of delectable recipes. French-born American chef Sophie Valroux had one dream: to be part of the 1% of female chefs running a Michelin-starred restaurant. From spending summers with her grandmother, who taught her the power of cooking and food, to attending the Culinary Institute of America, Sophie finds herself on the cusp of getting everything she's dreamed of. Until her career goes up in flames. Sabotaged by a fellow chef, Sophie is fired, leaving her reputation ruined and confidence shaken. To add fuel to the fire, Sophie learns that her grandmother has suffered a stroke and takes the red-eye to France. There, Sophie discovers the simple home she remembers from her childhood is now a luxurious château, complete with two restaurants and a vineyard. As Sophie tries to reestablish herself in the kitchen, she comes to understand the lengths people will go to for success and love, and how dreams can change.

Author: David France
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Child sexual abuse by clergy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Publisher's description: Our Fathers is history at its best--as intimate as a diary, as immediate and epic as a novel. When, in early 2002, a team of Boston Globe reporters broke open the pedophilia scandal around Father John J. Geoghan--and then Paul Shanley, Joseph Birmingham, and hundreds of other priests in Boston and across the country--the entire American Catholic Church spun into crisis. But by that time, the damage was already done. Perhaps a hundred thousand children had already fallen into traps laid by their priests. Every Catholic in the country--and everyone who had ever set foot in a church--faced troubling questions: Why had this happened? How could the secrets of this abuse have been so widely held, and so closely protected? How could the church have let it happen? David France takes us back to the church of the 1950s, a time of relative innocence, to look for answers. With deft nuance, he crafts a panoramic portrait of the faithful, encompassing the hopes, dreams, disappointments, and courage of hundreds of Catholic and non-Catholic families over the last fifty years. Based on hundreds of interviews, private correspondence, unpublished scientific probes and secret Vatican documents, and tens of thousands of pages of court records, he shows how the church's institutional suspicion of human sexuality ironically lit the fuse on the crisis. Our Fathers braids a heartbreaking narrative from the personal lives of good and bad priests, pious and heartless prelates, self-interested lawyers turned heroes, holy altar boys turned drug-addicts, mothers torn between their children and their faith, hard-bitten investigative reporters reduced to tears, and thousands of church critics who, through this crisis, returned to their faith renewed and invigorated. He shows us the intense history of dissent within the ranks, especially regarding Catholic teachings on sexuality and homosexuality. He tells the heroic stories of whistle-blowing nuns, independent pastors, church insiders trying to do the right thing, and--ultimately--a group of blue-collar men, all molested by the same priest, who overcame their bitterness and took it upon themselves to try to save their church. This book is a tribute to those ordinary Catholics called upon to make extraordinary contributions. Our Fathers is the sweeping, authoritative, and gripping work the scandal and its aftermath demand.

Author: Guillaume Musso
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 9781474619141
Category : Authors
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
'THE FRENCH SUSPENSE KING' New York Times 'It's no wonder that Musso is one of France's most loved, bestselling authors' Harlan Coben In 1999, after publishing three cult novels, celebrated author Nathan Fawles announces the end of his writing career and withdraws to Beaumont, a wild and beautiful island off the Mediterranean coast. Autumn 2018. As Fawles' novels continue to captivate readers, Mathilde Monney, a young Swiss journalist, arrives on the island, determined to unlock the writer's secrets and secure his first interview in twenty years. That same day, a woman's body is discovered on the beach and the island is cordoned off by the authorities. And so, begins a dangerous face off between Mathilde and Nathan, in which the line between truth and fiction becomes increasingly blurred... Praise for Guillaume Musso and The Reunion 'Extraordinary' Sunday Times 'Breathtakingly good. Do not miss it' Daily Mail 'One of the great thriller writers of our age' Daily Express 'Stylish and streamlined, nostalgic... More please' The Times 'Hugely enjoyable and beautifully staged, with an audacious authorial coup at the death that is simply breathtaking' Irish Times 'The French call it a coup de foudre: a strike of lightning. That's how The Reunion zapped me, electrified me. For almost a decade, Guillaume Musso has reigned supreme as France's most popular author, and with this he's instantly poised to join the ranks of Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo' A.J. Finn, author of The Woman in the Window

Author: Marc Fumaroli
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590173759
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
A New York Review Books Original During the eighteenth century, from the death of Louis XIV until the Revolution, French culture set the standard for all of Europe. In Sweden, Austria, Italy, Spain, England, Russia, and Germany, among kings and queens, diplomats, military leaders, writers, aristocrats, and artists, French was the universal language of politics and intellectual life. In When the World Spoke French, Marc Fumaroli presents a gallery of portraits of Europeans and Americans who conversed and corresponded in French, along with excerpts from their letters or other writings. These men and women, despite their differences, were all irresistibly attracted to the ideal of human happiness inspired by the Enlightenment, whose capital was Paris and whose king was Voltaire. Whether they were in Paris or far away, speaking French connected them in spirit with all those who desired to emulate Parisian tastes, style of life, and social pleasures. Their stories are testaments to the appeal of that famous “sweetness of life” nourished by France and its language.

Author: Janine Marsh
Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books
ISBN: 1782437339
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
One grey dismal day, Janine Marsh was on a trip to northern France to pick up some cheap wine. She returned to England a few hours later having put in an offer on a rundown old barn in the rural Seven Valleys area of Pas de Calais. This was not something she'd expected or planned for. Janine eventually gave up her job in London to move with her husband to live the good life in France. Or so she hoped. While getting to grips with the locals and la vie Française, and renovating her dilapidated new house, a building lacking the comforts of mains drainage, heating or proper rooms, and with little money and less of a clue, she started to realize there was lot more to her new home than she could ever have imagined. These are the true tales of Janine's rollercoaster ride through a different culture - one that, to a Brit from the city, was in turns surprising, charming and not the least bit baffling.

Author: Harlow G. Unger
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 1584659254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
The outrageous true story of the French plot to supply arms and ammunition to Washington's Continental Army, and the bold French spy, inventor, playwright, and rogue behind it all