France Books

In City of Rains the reader will not find surface inuendos nor the modern liberalism that has made the word "relationship" meaningless and temporary, rather, he will be drawn into the journey of his own soul...in all of its multilayered forms...to see that the seed of love in its purest state yearns to break through the soil of life experiences. I will read it again to nurture that seed in my own soul.

City of Rains is a quiet, gentle read; a truly refreshing work of art. It is a journey that I believe we can all identify with on some level. I hightly recommend this rare find.

I bought this book because I was intrigued with the author's credentials. There is a saying (Russian, I think) that for every language you learn, you earn a new soul. So what to expect of an author who is Canadian, with an apparently East Indian name, who has published translations of old French, and who knows Sanskrit, ancient Greek, and who knows what else?

The result I found was a many-souled story. Literary? Yes, but as accessible as it is lyrical. In parts it reminded me of my favorite passage in "Moby Dick", where Ishmael wanders the night streets of New Bedford. (A good book for a rainy night.) In other parts it brought to mind "Winesburg, Ohio," with characters who are stories.

Overall it is a modern Odyssey, crossing a world of political boundaries, seeking, what? One soul of humanity?

My favorite books are those I could not have written, but would have wanted to. Perhaps because I have been able to master only one language (not for lack of trying), I could never have written this book, but I wish I had.

This is a translated version of the book "Livre de recettes d' un Compagnon du Tour de France". The book is organized in sections according to the type of dough used. At the end of the book the author included the basic recipes for items such creams and batters. That is the only disadvantage of the book - you need to flip back and forth to different sections of the book, and sometimes a single recipe involves 4 sub-recipes in different sections. While this prevents repetition, it does make the book harder to use. The quantities listed usually make 3-4 full-size items (4 loaves, 4 cakes, etc.). Scaling down is not complicated, since all quantities are given in both metric and imperial measurements, but it is hard to figure out how much to prepare of everything if you only want to cook for a family and not for sale. I suggest to make a summary card of the whole recipe you are trying to make... before you break the first egg!. The recipes are very detailed and most items include drawings of the inner layers and a picture of the final product. I have tested about 20 recipes and the results are always impressive, although it always takes 2-3 times longer than I thought. An almond meringue cake with 4 components took a whole day to prepare. Similarly, the Saint-Honoré cake takes a whole day of work. I do recommend this book for people wanting to start a business in cake-making, as well as those like me that cook at home for a single family, but enjoys challenging cooking projects.

The Classic and Contemporary Recipes of Yves Thuries: French Pastry is without a doubt my favorate source for pastries. I am a 1984 graduate of the Culinary Institue of America and I currently own my own restaurant in Grand Lake Colorado. I only wish that Chef Thuries' book hadn't taken so long to become recognized in the states. This book has been long awaited in its translation.

Yves THURIES has put on paper an incredible study of the pastry arts! He has presented an organized, detailed and interesting study . His text is easy to follow and it captures you to move on to the next skill. Every possible detail is explained allowing one to move through the recipes without culinary stress. I have met Yves THURIES and found him to be a genuine master of the culinary arts. I found this book to be a life long reference book on the level of an encyclopaedia. I recommend this book for those that understand that it is not just pastry but it is an art form to be enjoyed and respected. Chef R. Sebastian-Young

Years ago, I read a book entitled "On Strategy: a Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War." The author, Col. Harry Sumner, relied heavily on Clausewitz in critiquing the US effort in that war. Having been led by other military historians to believe that Clausewitz was more or less clueless about strategy, I was somewhat taken aback by Sumner's heavy reliance on Clausewitz.

Then came Desert Storm, and even my untutored eye could see that the US military had taken the teachings of "On Strategy" to heart. One could say that the US victory in Desert Storm was essentially "Clausewitzian". Maybe Clausewitz had been getting some undeserved bad press.

"Clausewitz: a Very Short Introduction" rehabilitates the Prussian officer's reputation, giving his biography and distilling his thought into a manageable amount of reading. Clausewitz was no armchair theoretician. He was a professional soldier who saw extensive combat during the Napoleonic Wars, and he knew what he was talking about. He may even be the first author to recognize Murphy's Law. He called it "friction," and he wrote that it plagued every sort of military endeavor.

For those of us who are unwilling to grapple with the unabridged Clausewitz, this little book is just what the general ordered.

Clausewitz is notoriously difficult to understand, according to Prof. Howard, because so much of what he wrote was not intended for publication. As Clausewitz himself stated, he wrote a "collection of materials from which a theory of war was to have been distilled." Professor Howard, the co-author of the standard English translation of Clausewitz, begins that distillation process in these few pages.

He first places Clausewitz in context, with a review of his family origins and military experience. He was commissioned as an officer in the Prussian Army at the age of 12, fought in his first campaign in 1793 at the age of 13 against the forces of Revolutionary France on the Rhine and then in the Vosges. In 1806 he was captured following the French defeat of Prussian forces at Auerstadt, a subsidiary of Napoleon's great victory over the Prussians at Jena. He then spent two years in captivity as a prisoner of war in France. When later the Prussian king allied himself with Napoleon, Clausewitz resigned from the Prussian Army and joined the Russian Army, where he participated in the Russian victory over Napoleon at Borodino. When the Prussian King, Frederick William III, eventually joined the Alliance against Napoleon in 1813, Clausewitz became an advisor to General Blucher during the Leipzig campaign, though still in Russian uniform. After being allowed by the King to rejoin the Prussian Army he became chief of staff to the Prussian III Corps, which acted as a blocking force at Waterloo. He then spent 12 years at the Prussian Army War College, where he spent much of his time writing his most famous work, On War. He died in 1831, at the age of 51, in a cholera epidemic in Breslau, where he had been sent to institute a cordon sanitaire to prevent the disease from spreading.

Clausewitz' ideas were formed in the cauldron of the transition from formalized 18th century warfare to the total war of the French Revolution and Napoleonic era. The successive Prussian defeats had a profound effect on him, stimulating a rethinking of the theory of warfare as it evolved in his lifetime. There is much debate about how much of his work applies only to the particular circumstances of his era and how much is applicable to warfare in general.

He is frequently contradictory and ambiguous, which is not surprising, given the extreme complexity of the human social phenomenon he is attempting to analyze. These are a few of his better-known concepts:

- the FRICTION of war (now often called the "FOG of war")
- successful warfare always involves a FIGHT, although paradoxically, an "unfought fight", such as the nuclear exchange that didn't happen during the Cold War, can have as much effect as an actual fight
- the necessity of attacking the enemy's CENTER
- the power of the DEFENSE
- the necessity of SUPERIOR FORCE for VICTORY
- the importance of MORALE
- the concept of WAR AS AN EXTENSION OF POLITICS


Prof. Howard provides a good summary of the way Clausewitz influenced the ideas and operations of the great wars of the 20th century - WWI, WWII, and the Cold War - and gives guidance for further study. He recommends in particular three books:

Peter Paret - "Clausewitz and the State"
Azar Gat - "The Origins of Military Thought from the
Enlightenment to Clausewitz"
Raymond Aron - "Penser la guerre, Clausewitz"

There is as yet no complete English translation of Clausewitz' works.

Highly recommended as an introduction to the study of history's foremost philosopher of warfare.

Clausewitz is notoriously difficult for the novice to master -- some would argue that no one has ever entirely "mastered" Clausewitz. Be that as it may, a legion of frustrated amateur strategists can attest to the difficulty of picking up Clausewitz's "On War" and trying to read it through without a guide. In the "Clausewitz" volume in the Past Masters series, the novice as well as the experienced strategist can gain an introduction to the master's life, experiences, and writings that will make the first reading intelligible and that will serve as a quick review of Clausewitz's main concepts in a format that can easily be read in an evening.

This is a book that should stand next to "On War" in every strategist's library.

Paris in the Sixties - the last days of the Bohemian Paris of Joyce, Hemingway and the Left Bank. Soon the reaction to the student revolution of 1968 will lead to a conservative backlash and to a modernised, suburbanised Paris, but as yet it is still an escape from the cultural deserts of Australia and Northern England. A young couple are living on meagre earnings from teaching English in a run-down language institute; in their spare time Jane paints, Tom writes poetry. Their apartment, it turns out, has a direct connection to the rat-infested sewers of the city, but they are happy with their alternative lifestyle until they invite an unusual, but fascinating person to live with them. They are then made to realise what a really alternative lifestyle means. Are Tom and Jane a match or a mismatch? The novel, while showing the bitter-sweet quality of the young couple's relationship and giving a nostalgic picture of a now-vanished Paris, is full of comic episodes, notably the description of the language school and of the adventures of Sally, the couple's wild friend.

If you have visited Paris and loved it you will love this book. Its delicious weaving of the sights, smells, tastes and texture of Paris in the 1960's quickly gets you in and you are hooked.

Here you meet the principal characters, Tom, a truculent Englishman and his new wife Jane, an Australian girl from a far distant and contrastingly naive world of gum trees and koalas who have arrived to stake a claim at the fringes of the capital of culture.

Jane's heart sinks when she hears another Australian accent as Sally washes up in Paris and breaks in on her bohemian world. Tom, a confirmed "leg man" (its the implications of legs that attracts him)has to revise his scientifically precise scale of perfection to accommodate the "implications" of the beautiful new arrival.

How Tom and Jane end up getting both rather more and rather less than they bargained for in this triangle is the twist here and as they do so they learn a lesson in worldliness and win the reader's affection.

It is a great book for travellers (which by definition includes most Australians), those who are interested in the Paris of Sartre and anyone who likes a story about self discovery.

I loved this book! Vibrant, warm, clever, subtle, fabulous characterization, great atmosphere -- I felt like I'd lived in bohemian 60s Paris just through reading it. Her compassionate portrayal of these complex characters makes for a rewarding and sustaining read: you have to admire the author's skill at giving such lyrical and realistic expression to this all-too-human couple's dilemmas. Patricia Page allows the reader to see the world from the inside out, her manipulation of characters is so subtle as to be almost invisible. A particularly fine achievement for a first-time writer. The story involved, enthralled, delighted me -- and it was only long after I put it down that the magic dispelled, and I could realise fully Page's skill. Highly recommended. It'll make you think twice about wearing a skirt.

To know Jean Cocteau, visit the chapels, tombs & monuments he left for posterity, or watch his films. If you can't, read this book.

I originally picked this book up at the library and liked it so much I bought two copies: One for myself and one for a friend. This is a wonderful biography of one of the most influential men of the Arts in France. Since I don't live in France, or Paris to be exact since his influence would have been felt there the most, I don't know if forty years after his death he still influences the Arts or not. However, he was a force to be reckoned with during his lifetime and this bio gives the reader a great sense of what Paris was like from the late 1800's to the early 1960's. Fascinating.

Cocteau seems to turn up in most unusual places. First he is praised by no less a figure than Edith Wharton, then he is hobnobbing with Proust, then off with Picasso, Diagalev, Stravinsky, and the Ballets Russes set, finally he is a film maker of the live action film of Beauty and the Beast. In between his life was filled with more living than should be allowed by law. Steegmuller's biography does justice to this life and probably will remain the definative text on the subject.

I don't usually understand 'feminist' readings, but this book is a real exception. It is so poetically written, and it is really more about autobiography than it is about the author in the title. But it made me want to read Colette, and convinced me that she should be taken seriously, as more than the author of "Gigi". Flieger real knows her stuff. This is a keeper, for both theory mavens and literature buffs. Check it out!

This is a very critically insightful and readable book, a must for students of autobiography. It is as much about Freudian theory as about Colette. It shows how even when autobiographers 'tell the truth' it is never 'nothing but the truth' or 'the whole truth'. Also very poetic

This is an excellent psychoanalytic treatment of autobiography as an effect of the "mourning-work", with a highly original reading of Colette's own "fictionalization" of the events of her life. Highly recommended for students of psychoanalysis and women's studies.

I am studying Interior Design...and this book is great! It is easy to read and very helpful!

I own about 25 books on interior design and home decoration. This is certainly in my top three, and probably the most oft consulted of them all. Each chapter covers one of the basic colours, from green and blue through to pinks and neutrals. But after this sparse description it is hard to convey the beauty and depth of this book. When I say cover a colour, I mean really explore it. It's cool version, warm version, soft, light, borderline with its neighbouring colour on the colour wheel.

And the way that each colour is covered is unique. Very minimal (but useful) text, and instead full page pictures of utterly inspiring interiors featuring the colour tone/intensity on each and every page. It uses excellent photographs from a wide and rich range of interior design. All true to life from real (moderna and historical) homes - and usually illustrating a good marriage between a particular colour/shade and the style it most compliments. Going through it, one soon becomes aware of one's taste. The pictures are so good - so evocative of the theme of that particular colour - that one has a simple emotional response of things like "love", "comforting", "not me", "does nothing for me", "joyful", etc. Using this book and trusting my visceral response to the delightful, subtle shades on each page, I virtually decorated my whole house.

A very sophisticated book on colour, that speaks to us in the most simple of ways - through the eye to the heart.

This book has many traditional rooms, but because it is not new, the "contemporary" rooms tend to look a little dated now. Funny how the old days look better than the recent past. What set it apart for me was the text, which discusses the history of color in decoration and is extremely interesting without being long, and the information on pigment reactions in making ones own paint. She includes several pages of different pigments mixed together in the back, as well as a discussion of different wall painting mediums. As a painter making my own lime wash, this book, while not a complete reference, gave a few invaluable details that made my project a success, and I really only bought it to see the photos of rooms in different colors.

Anthony Kemp, author and military historian, wrote the Foreword to "The Command is Forward." He called the book "- - an immensely detailed and honest - -" work on WW II and the role of the infantryman. Kemp's works include several books on the Lorraine Campaign, particularly those on the battle for Metz in late 1944.

The book "The Command Is Forward" has been an incredible journey for me to take back through those days with my father. He and I each have a book and we are reading and discussing it over the phone. Last weekend he told me that the book made him cry. I have never seen my father cry. The division make-up was an incredible construct of college students, National Guard cadre and filler personnel. If you want to know what it feels like to go into combat as a green private lead by green officers and NCOs and facing a seasoned Panzer division you will never come any closer to the real experience then this book. Read it or miss one of the most important pieces of literature to come out of WWII. This book is one of the greatest gifts I have ever received and I owe Jim a debt that I will never be able to pay.

I expected to find this book interesting because I fought in this campaign. I was a sniper in the 26th Division of Patton's Third Army. But I never dreamed I would find so much information. Information I had been searching for. Like, for instance, what happened to my squad leader and the remnants of my squad after they left me wounded on the foot of Hill 310. I found that information, and lots more, in "The Command Is Forward."
I not only found a daily diary kept by our regiment for every day of the campaign. I found similar records kept by the German outfits we were fighting. And I found comments from the German commanders as to what they had expected from our division. And what they got.
I have filled my book with highlighting marks, and I often just go back and review those highlighted parts. Most are very personal. Anyone who fought in Europe, especially in the 26th Division or the Third Army should have this book, and so should any relatives or descendants of such veterans.
Try it. You will be as pleased as I was.

Good overview of pebble mosaics with very helpful information on materials and techniques. The book also has good examples of works by professional mosaicists in the field of pebblework.

Maggy Howarth's COMPLETE PEBBLE MOSAIC HANDBOOK provides a review of pebble mosaics which can be used in gardens, patios and public places. Artists, landscapers, and any with a special interest in the design qualities of these mosaics will find this a beautiful collection which not only provides step-by-step insights, but includes a survey of traditional works by contemporary pebble mosaic artists.

This book contains spectacular photography through-out: both photos that highlight the artistry of finished works and the close-up, clear, work-in-progress photos that highlight techniques for successful projects. Accompanying text is very readable, and contains a wealth of information about pebble mosaics. I bought the book for the photographs, but was also fascinated by the information about the people and communities that came together to create stunning mosaics to enhance public spaces in their towns.

I teach traditional upholstery restoration in NYC and always recommend to my students that they have this book as a resource. It is a wonderful reference -- very clear and concise -- with detailed illustrations. Thank goodness it is still in print, as traditional upholstery done with horse hair and hand stitching is rapidly losing its existence to a world of foam-based furniture constructed with glue and staples.

Just about anything and everything you ever wanted or needed to know about upholstery is in this book. Photographs and descriptions of professional tools,

The book starts by teaching about style through the ages with the help of period drawings and paintings... then a walk through materials and techniques. Even a list of addresses of suppliers of professional upholstery supplies is provided. This is an essential reference for anyone thinking about upholstering anything.

I agree entirely with the reviews of this admirable book. But the buyer should be aware that it's an English publication and all the sources for supplies etc are British. As one who is having a tough time finding American suppliers of materials suitable for antiques who are willing to sell retail, I'm finding that's a fairly big gap.