Johannes Willms, a historian and journalist, recreates the years from 1789 - the city on the brink of upheaval - to the First World War. He masterfully weaves various social, political, artistic and economic threads into a vivid tapestry, allowing the general reader as well as the scholar the rare opportunity to grasp the city in Proustian detail.

One reads not only of the estates, the Terror, and the Commune, but also of street life and repression, social customs, Napoleonic architecture, the growth of trade and commerce, work and wages, health and hygiene, morality, class struggles, crime, and of course art and entertainment.