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A Taste of Paris: A History of the Parisian Love Affair with Food

In bookstores everywhere on Sept. 26, 2017 but already available for pre-ordering (click on the image) Related posts: A Taste of Paris: A History of…

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A PASSION FOR PARIS: Romanticism and Romance in the City of Light, Book Tour, spring 2015, update

Our spring 2015, coast-to-coast extravaganza to celebrated the publication of A PASSION FOR PARIS: Romanticism and Romance in the City of Light, starts on April…

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A Passion for Paris: Literary Dinner Event at Piedmont Restaurant in Durham

    Join us at one of America's premier gourmet, organic restaurants, Piedmont Restaurant, in Durham, South Carolina, for an extraordinary feast featuring my new…

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A Passion for Paris: The Real Romance of Paris (Be Original!)

  Now and then, then and now… The scene opens with thousands of “love locks” glinting on a bridge spanning the Seine. Competing accordionists play…

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A Passion for Paris: France’s Most Popular Writers Then and Now are Romantics

  photos courtesy Alison Harris   A couple of jpegs of Le Figaro. They show “the best-loved most widely read writers” in France. Guess who…

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A Passion for Paris: Beautiful Bagatelles, Charles X, Debauchery and Romance

A Passion for Paris: Romance at Bagatelle David Downie, March 2015     Were Romance and Romanticism in Paris born at the Bagatelle, possibly the…

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A Passion for Paris: George Sand, Romanticism’s Great Woman Happy?

  George Sand was the "Great Woman" of the Romantic Age, according to Victor Hugo. If anyone could make that claim it was Hugo. Successful,…

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Starred Review for A Passion for Paris on Kirkus Reviews

Bonjour!  I can’t help sharing this rave, starred review in the notoriously "difficult" (discerning?) Kirkus Reviews:   KIRKUS REVIEW Join Downie (Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim…

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A Passion for Paris: the Romance of Paris Theaters Then and Now

        Is theater in Paris romantic and Romantic? Yes indeed, Romantic with a capital “R” as in Romanticism and the Great Romantics.…

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A Passion for Paris: The Age of Romanticism lives on in Paris

The Arsenal Library in Paris   The Age of Romanticism lives on in Paris, in the streets, parks, buildings and cityscape—and in the hearts and…

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Charlie Hebdo and French Caricature: Children of the Revolution and Romantic Age

Louis XVI shown as a glutton, Revolutionary era caricature   Caricature has always been a dangerous business in France: starting from the earliest days of…

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Paris and Freedom: Censorship and Terror Have Never Worked and Will Never Work

The spirit of 1789–and 1830, 1848, 1871, 1944, 1968 and 2015 (not to mention a dozen dates in ancient, medieval, and pre-modern history–lives on. When…

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