An edition of Tales of the new Babylon (1994)

Tales of the new Babylon

Paris 1869-1875

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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 18, 2024 | History
An edition of Tales of the new Babylon (1994)

Tales of the new Babylon

Paris 1869-1875

  • 1 Want to read

As Christiansen illustrates with marvelous immediacy, the carnival facade of the Second Empire, presided over by the aging libertine Louis Napoleon and his unpopular fashion plate of a wife, the Empress Eugenie, masked an empty soul. The Empire may have been destined to collapse under the weight of its own corruption, but in the meantime there was fun to be had and money to be made.

A genius of self-promotion, Louis Napoleon managed to sustain his reign of "quiet tyranny" more by propaganda than by active repression.

Christiansen begins his account of the tottering Empire with a wonderfully gossipy description of Louis Napoleon's massive (and hugely boring) hunting parties at Compiegne. From there he moves on to Paris, chronicling everything from its fervor for shopping, its gourmandise, and its anxieties about sex to its legendary artists, who included Baudelaire, Monet, Degas, Offenbach, and Zola.

But this dazzling city, rebuilt by the brilliant and ruthless social engineer Baron Haussmann to showcase the splendors of the Second Empire - its grands magasins, grands boulevards, and grandes horizontales (as the famous courtesans of the day were called) - was soon to be wracked by the Franco-Prussian War, the five-month Siege of Paris and the bloody civil war that followed it, and the subsequent emergence of the Commune.

Publish Date
Publisher
Minerva
Language
English
Pages
320

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Paris Babylon
Paris Babylon: grandeur, decadence and revolution 1869-1875
2003, Pimlico
in English
Cover of: Paris Babylon
Paris Babylon: the story of the Paris Commune
1996, Pengiun Books
in English
Cover of: Paris Babylon
Paris Babylon: The Story of the Paris Commune
March 1, 1995, Viking Adult
Hardcover in English - 1st American ed edition
Cover of: Tales of the new Babylon
Tales of the new Babylon: Paris 1869-1875
1995, Minerva
in English
Cover of: Paris Babylon
Paris Babylon: the story of the Paris Commune
1994, Viking
in English - 1st American ed.
Cover of: Tales of the New Babylon
Tales of the New Babylon: Paris 1869-1875
1994, Sinclair-Stevenson
in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Published in
London

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
944.360812
Library of Congress
DC733 .C485 1995

The Physical Object

Pagination
(320)p. ;
Number of pages
320

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL18192621M
Internet Archive
talesofnewbabylo0000chri_t8w6
ISBN 10
0749319151
OCLC/WorldCat
36585309
Library Thing
654950

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