Paris to the Pyrenees

Author: David Downie
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1453298630
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Part adventure story, part cultural history, this “enjoyably offbeat travelogue” explores the phenomenon of the spiritual pilgrimage (Booklist). Driven by curiosity, wanderlust, and health crises, David Downie and his wife set out from Paris to walk across France to the Pyrenees. Starting on the Rue Saint-Jacques, then trekking 750 miles south to Roncesvalles, Spain, their eccentric route takes 72 days on Roman roads and pilgrimage paths—a 1,100-year-old network of trails leading to the sanctuary of Saint James the Greater. It is best known as El Camino de Santiago de Compostela—“The Way” for short. The object of any pilgrimage is an inward journey manifested in a long, reflective walk. For Downie, the inward journey met the outer one: a combination of self-discovery and physical regeneration. More than 200,000 pilgrims take the highly commercialized Spanish route annually, but few cross France. Downie had a goal: to go from Paris to the Pyrenees on age-old trails, making the pilgrimage in his own maverick way.

Escape Through the Pyrenees

Author: Lisa Fittko
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 9780810118034
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Story of a high school teacher whose students (underprivileged and Hispanic) have set standards in mathematics American education. A gripping memoir of German-Jewish leftist Fittko's life as an alien her path from concentration camp internee to underground rescue operative (the great philosopher and was one of many whom she and her comrades saved). Translated from the German edition of 1985 (Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Boundaries

Author: Peter Sahlins
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520911210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 375

Book Description
This book is an account of two dimension of state and nation building in France and Spain since the seventeenth century--the invention of a national boundary line and the making of Frenchmen and Spaniards. It is also a history of Catalan rural society in the Cerdanya, a valley in the eastern Pyrenees divided between Spain and France in 1659. This study shuttles between two levels, between the center and the periphery. It connects the "macroscopic" political and diplomatic history of France and Spain, from the Old Regime monarchies to the national territorial states of the later nineteenth century; and the "molecular" history--the historical ethnography--of Catalan village communities, rural nobles, and peasants in the borderland. On the frontier, these two histories come together, and they can be told as one. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990. This book is an account of two dimension of state and nation building in France and Spain since the seventeenth century--the invention of a national boundary line and the making of Frenchmen and Spaniards. It is also a history of Catalan rural society in

A Passion for Paris

Author: David Downie
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466841257
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
"A top-notch walking tour of Paris. . . . The author's encyclopedic knowledge of the city and its artists grants him a mystical gift of access: doors left ajar and carriage gates left open foster his search for the city's magical story. Anyone who loves Paris will adore this joyful book. Readers visiting the city are advised to take it with them to discover countless new experiences." —Kirkus Reviews (starred) A unique combination of memoir, history, and travelogue, this is author David Downie's irreverent quest to uncover why Paris is the world's most romantic city—and has been for over 150 years. Abounding in secluded, atmospheric parks, artists' studios, cafes, restaurants and streets little changed since the 1800s, Paris exudes romance. The art and architecture, the cityscape, riverbanks, and the unparalleled quality of daily life are part of the equation. But the city's allure derives equally from hidden sources: querulous inhabitants, a bizarre culture of heroic negativity, and a rich historical past supplying enigmas, pleasures and challenges. Rarely do visitors suspect the glamor and chic and the carefree atmosphere of the City of Light grew from and still feed off the dark fountainheads of riot, rebellion, mayhem and melancholy—and the subversive literature, art and music of the Romantic Age. Weaving together his own with the lives and loves of Victor Hugo, Georges Sand, Charles Baudelaire, Balzac, Nadar and other great Romantics Downie delights in the city's secular romantic pilgrimage sites asking , Why Paris, not Venice or Rome—the tap root of "romance"—or Berlin, Vienna and London—where the earliest Romantics built castles-in-the-air and sang odes to nightingales? Read A Passion for Paris: Romanticism and Romance in the City of Light and find out.

The Nightingale

Author: Kristin Hannah
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
ISBN: 9781427212672
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
In love we find out who we want to be. In war we find out who we are. FRANCE, 1939 In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn't believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive. Vianne's sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others. With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women's war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

The Alps and Pyrenees

Author: Victor Hugo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Alps
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Book Description

The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography

Author: Graham Robb
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039306882X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 475

Book Description
"A witty, engaging narrative style…[Robb's] approach is particularly engrossing." —New York Times Book Review A narrative of exploration—full of strange landscapes and even stranger inhabitants—that explains the enduring fascination of France. While Gustave Eiffel was changing the skyline of Paris, large parts of France were still terra incognita. Even in the age of railways and newspapers, France was a land of ancient tribal divisions, prehistoric communication networks, and pre-Christian beliefs. French itself was a minority language. Graham Robb describes that unknown world in arresting narrative detail. He recounts the epic journeys of mapmakers, scientists, soldiers, administrators, and intrepid tourists, of itinerant workers, pilgrims, and herdsmen with their millions of migratory domestic animals. We learn how France was explored, charted, and colonized, and how the imperial influence of Paris was gradually extended throughout a kingdom of isolated towns and villages. The Discovery of France explains how the modern nation came to be and how poorly understood that nation still is today. Above all, it shows how much of France—past and present—remains to be discovered. A New York Times Notable Book, Publishers Weekly Best Book, Slate Best Book, and Booklist Editor's Choice.

Haunting Paris

Author: Mamta Chaudhry
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0525565388
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Paris, 1989: Alone in her luminous apartment on Île Saint-Louis, Sylvie discovers a mysterious letter among her late lover Julien’s possessions, launching her into a decades-old search for a child who vanished in the turbulence of the Second World War. She is unaware that she is watched over by Julien’s ghost, his love for her powerful enough to draw him back to this world, though doomed now to remain a silent observer. Sylvie’s quest leads her deep into the secrets of Julien’s past, shedding new light on the dark days of Nazi-occupied Paris. A timeless story of love and loss, Haunting Paris matches emotional intensity with lyrical storytelling to explore grief, family secrets, and the undeniable power of memory.

The Little French Bistro

Author: Nina George
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0451495608
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of The Little Paris Bookshop, an extraordinary novel about self-discovery and new beginnings. Marianne is stuck in a loveless, unhappy marriage. After forty-one years, she has reached her limit, and one evening in Paris she decides to take action. Following a dramatic moment on the banks of the Seine, Marianne leaves her life behind and sets out for the coast of Brittany, also known as “the end of the world.” Here she meets a cast of colorful and unforgettable locals who surprise her with their warm welcome, and the natural ease they all seem to have, taking pleasure in life’s small moments. And, as the parts of herself she had long forgotten return to her in this new world, Marianne learns it’s never too late to begin the search for what life should have been all along. With all the buoyant charm that made The Little Paris Bookshop a beloved bestseller, The Little French Bistro is a tale of second chances and a delightful embrace of the joys of life in France.

Paris Requiem

Author: Chris Lloyd
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1639362673
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Book Description
A gripping World War II murder mystery—and a beautifully drawn portrait of Paris under Nazi occupation—with compelling and conflicted hero Detective Eddie Giral at its heart. Paris, 1940. As the city adjusts to life under Nazi occupation, Detective Eddie Giral struggles to reconcile his job as a policeman with his new role enforcing a regime he cannot believe in, but must work under. He's sacrificed so much in order to survive in this new world, but the past is not so easily forgotten. When an old friend—and an old flame—reappear, begging for his help, Eddie must decide how far he will go to help those he loves. The notion of justice itself quickly becomes as dangerous, blurred, and confused as the war itself. And Eddie’s morale compass, ever on unreliable foundations, will be questioned again and again as the ravages of the German occupation steadily attempt to grind him—and the city he loves—into submission. Negotiating a path between resistance and collaboration, he can remain a good man and do nothing—or risk everything he has achieved in a desperate act of resistance.