Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris

This book is not a conventional narrative of the history of Paris, nor is it the comprehensive study of its denizens that its title might suggest. Rather, what Graham Robb has written is a collection of short tales about some of the people and events that have experienced and shaped the city, from a trip taken by a young Corsican lieutenant to Paris on the eve of of the French Revolution (spoiler: it's Napoleon Bonaparte) to an account of the riots by second-generation immigrants in Paris's suburbs in 2005. Robb uses these stories to illuminate the distinctive character of Parisians and how they both reflect and contributed to the development of the modern metropolis. There is considerable variety both in Robb's selections and in their show more presentation, as a few of the tales are presented as dialogues or scripts. Inevitably some will be of greater appeal to readers than others depending on their own interests, but nearly everyone interested in the history of the "City of Lights" will find something in its pages to entertain and inform them. show less

Highly uneven. Robb set out to write about Paris through a series of vignettes about lesser known events in the city's past. Sometimes that works really well, as in the chapter about the catacombs, Hitler's whistlestop tour of Paris in 1940, or when Robb recounts, with appropriate scepticism, what we know about the possible real life story which was the inspiration for The Count of Monte Cristo. Sometimes that's a lot less successful, as in the chapter about May '68 (which amusing to me as a clear send-up of academic history texts, because I read a lot of them, but I can see how it would be frustrating to non-academics) and in the chapter about Juliette Gréco, which was written as a quasi-existentialist screenplay and which I thought show more execrable. Since this is a book without footnotes or a clear explanation of methodology for each chapter, moreover, I was anxious about how far I trusted Robb's research—I caught a couple of things about medieval Paris (the Sainte-Chapelle is not a basilica, in the canonical or architectural sense) and I frequently had no idea if Robb's description of a person's mood, reaction or utterances was based on anything more than fancy on his part. One to dip into rather than read cover-to-cover. show less

I loved this quirky take on the history of my favourite city. I was constantly astonished by Robb's fantastic abilty to unearth tiny details with huge significance. At times this readslike a thrilling detective story - at times like a romance. Next time you go to Paris, the streets under your feet will have far greater siginificance that you could possibly have imagined before reading this book.

I've been beaten. I can't do it; I can't finish this book. The stories I've read so far are mostly really interesting, but the writing is so florid, so excessive, which such an effort to overly dramatise the narrative that I just can't dig my way through it any longer.

I'm bummed, because this could have been an incredibly fascinating collection if the writer hadn't gotten in the way of the stories themselves. Perhaps someday I'll give it another go, but for now, color me defeated.

This is one of the best and most interesting books I've read in a long time. I guess strictly speaking it's a geography book, but there is so much depth to the individual stories that it goes way beyond that. Each of the twenty sections tells the story of one part of Paris at one time, or through a related connection of times. Each section is told in a different style and sometimes the styles are very unusual, with one section written as a screenplay. I found it to be an unusually difficult book to read because of the layering of ideas but also unusually rewarding.

I really loved Robb's previous book 'The Discovery of France', so I had certain expectations for this book. As before, the book consists of various vignettes or short stories bound by a common theme, in this case the city of Paris.
Robb has a very nice and easy style, at once familiar with and fond of France, yet sufficiently distant so as to note its peculiarities.
As has been pointed out by other readers, the quality of these parts is rather uneven: the film scenario with Juliette Gréco is particularly painful). What jarred most was the writer's tendency to describe historic events with fictionalised details. Robb has no way of knowing when exactly Hitler sighed during his tour of Paris, or what went through Napoleon's mind at a show more certain moment. The author probably intended to liven up his tale, but the effect is that the reader starts to doubt the veracity of the entire story. Has Mitterrand ever been the victim of a false assassination attempt, or is this too an embellishment by the author? The continuous irritating buzz of these questions interferes with the reading experience like a loud bluebottle in a quiet room.
As Parisians would say: Bof. show less

I enjoyed Robb's earlier work: [[The Discovery Of France]]. In this new book he tells stories of both major and minor historical figures who lived in Paris from the French Revolution to present. The book begins with Marie Antoinette losing her way in the streets of Paris in an attempt to escape her capture and eventual beheading. In a chapter entitled Files Of The Surete, Robb chronicles the crimes solved by Vidocq - a former criminal turned detective who modernized the Parisian police. Another chapter discusses various assassination attempts on Degaulle, including something I did not know - before Mitterand became President, he arranged a fake assassination attempt on himself. Only one chapter dragged for me - probably because it was show more written in the style of a screenplay. The older sections draw more from diaries than from contemporaneous news sources, As a result they tend to have the feel of historic fiction. show less