Paris in the Belle Époque is remembered as a golden era of cultural flourishing and political progress. The period between the revolutionary decade of the 1870s and the outbreak of war in 1914 saw the modern French capital take shape: during the day Parisians could admire the rising Eiffel Tower and the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur, while at night they wandered the bohemian world of the Moulin Rouge. But as Mike Rapport reveals in his new work "City of Light, City of Shadows," beneath the elegant surface Paris was at war with itself. For the Belle Époque was also a time of social and religious upheaval, debates over women's liberation, and violent conflicts over what it meant to be French.

Paris pulses with pleasure, anxieties, and tensions stemming from the rapid pace of modernity: bright electric lights illuminate the night, the first cars move along the boulevards, as do the first Metro stations and airplane flights. At the same time, reactionary forces reemerge through the new mass media - most dramatically in the infamous Dreyfus Affair, which exposed the dark heart of French anti-Semitism. Narratives from the viewpoints of the era's greatest figures - writer Émile Zola, feminist activist Marguerite Durand, Vietnamese diplomat Nguy?n Tr?ng Hiệp, and socialist politician Jean Jaurès - weave together stories of grandeur and hardship, pleasure and anxiety, offering a brilliant account of the shadows cast over the City of Light.

Pages: 448, Year of Publication: 0514, Dimensions: 15.2x15.2cm