Metro Stop Paris

A history of Paris in twelve métro stops. Métro Stop Paris recounts the extraordinary and colorful history of the City of Light, by way of twelve Métro stops-a voyage across both space and time. At each stop a Parisian building, or street, or tomb or landmark sparks a story that holds particular significance for that area of the city. Dallas takes us to the jazz cellars and literary cafés of Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés; the catacombs at Hell's Gate; and the Opéra during the days of Claude Debussy. A darker side of Paris emerges at the Trocadéro stop and a charitable side at the Gare du Nord, which highlights the work of Saint Vincent de Paul. Finally, our journey ends at Père-Lachaise cemetery with the little-known story of Oscar Wilde's curious involvement in the Dreyfus affair, one of France's greatest legal scandals. From Hell (the Denfert-Rochereau stop on the south side of the city) to Heaven (the Gare du Nord at the north end of Paris), Métro Stop Paris carries readers on a journey of the heart and mind. Métro Stop Paris is a thinker's guide to Paris made up of "slices of life," little vignettes drawn from Paris's two thousand years of history. Taken separately, these are charming historic tales about a city known and loved by many, but read as a whole Métro Stop Paris goes straight to the heart of what is quintessentially Parisian.

A unique guide to the legendary Paris Métro that reveals, line by line, station by station, what to see and do to discover Paris like a Parisian.

A history of the City of Light as reflected by twelve Mtro stops near landmark buildings, streets, or tombs includes coverage of such sites as the literary caf at Montparnasse, the catacombs at Hell's Gate, and the Pre-Lachaise cemetery. 40,000 first printing.

“A nuanced, engrossing novel about conviction and terrorism in a cosmopolitan, complicated world.”—National Book Review From the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, Paris Metro is a story of East meets West. Kit, a reporter, has spent several years after 9/11 living in the Middle East, working as a correspondent for an American newspaper. Along the way she falls in love and marries a charismatic Iraqi diplomat named Ahmed, before their separation leaves Kit raising their teenage son alone in Paris. But after the Charlie Hebdo attack occurs and, a few months later, terrorists storm the Bataclan, Kit’s core beliefs are shattered. The violence she had spent years covering abroad is now on her doorstep. As Kit struggles with her grief and confusion, she begins to mistrust those closest to her: her friends, her husband, even her own son.

“The metro may be a mere hundred years old but it tells a tale of France twenty times as long. The story begins in the fifth century BC when wild Celtic tribes roamed the countryside of Gaul. Then Julius Caesar imposed a Roman rule that lasted five hundred years and forced the Celts to settle down. All that seems like only yesterday to a Frenchman because those Celts and Romans are close friends to every reader of the French comic book series Asterix. Asterix and his fellow Celts live quite happily in a small, fortified enclave in Brittany in northwestern France. Their idyllic, primitive existence is occasionally intruded upon by those nasty Roman conquerors, but the Celts always manage to get the best of the Romans despite great odds… “Alésia - (Métro Line 4). The Battle of Alésia (52 BC) is the oldest event commemorated in the Paris Metro. The Celtic warrior Vercingétorix managed to unite competing tribes against the Romans in one last attempt to save Gallic independence. It was not an easy task. It was difficult to live with, let alone lead, these autonomous, quarrelsome groups. Vercingétorix planned to wage hit-and-run guerrilla warfare- to starve the Romans into defeat by destroying the crops in their path as they penetrated deeper into Gaul in pursuit of the pesky Celts. In the town of Bourges the local population refused to allow the destruction of their wheat - a fatal mistake. Caesar descended on the town and confiscated it for his hungry troops. With renewed energy the Romans gave chase. The Celts retreated to a high plateau called Alésia, where they were quickly surrounded by Caesar’s forces. “The table was now turned. Caesar built a fortification around Alésia, twelve and a half miles in circumference. It consisted of a double row of spikes, one facing inward and the other outward, which prevented both escape and the re-provisioning of the rebels. The Celts had only a month´s worth of provisions but somehow they held out for two by which time the men were famished and exhausted. Vercingétorix surrendered. Few lives had been lost in battle but countless numbers died of starvation. Vercingétorix was imprisoned in Rome where six years later when he was all but forgotten Caesar had him strangled to death… “Both the Celts who lost and the Romans who won have contributed much to French culture, so it’s a tricky thing for the French to say whether Alésia was a victory or a defeat. One thing is clear: in real life, the Celts did not always win. “In the end, it was most likely the mountains of horse manure that gave birth to the Paris Metro. During the last quarter of the 19th century, Paris did not lack the means of transport. What it patently lacked was a transportation system. There were competing omnibus lines, trams, trains and private conveyances, all overlapping, most taking roundabout routes throughout the city, hindering one another and certainly hindering business. “Forty lines of horse-drawn omnibuses traversed Paris in 1870 and ten thousand horses were required to pull them. The maintenance of the horses ate up fifty percent of the entire company budget. Each omnibus held about 20 passengers, half of them riding on top of the carriage. By the turn of the century the omnibuses carried as many as forty people each, still with many sitting on the carriage roof. The roads were made of cobblestones or wood planks or sometimes just hardened mud; there were no shock absorbers on the carriages; and the stench from the horse manure was overwhelming. One hundred million passengers used the omnibuses that year, probably half of them holding perfumed handkerchiefs to their noses to ward off the stench.”

Bring the French melting pot into your kitchenTake your tastebuds on a global Parisian adventure and cook up 100 easy-to-follow recipes, adapted by famous Parisian chefs to use at home.Get the best of French international haute cuisine with a wealth of world influences from South East Asia, to Morocco and Japan. Recreate mouth watering flavours from Salt and Pepper Shrimp with Cognac to Black Sesame Macaroons.All brought to life with beautiful colour line-drawings from Paris-based illustrator Dinah Diwan.Bon Appetit!

A love letter to Paris and a meditation on how it has changed in two decades, evolving from the twentieth century into the twenty-first, from analog to digital. Your telephone is precious. It may be envied. We recommend vigilance when using it in public. --Paris bus public notice In fall 2014 Lauren Elkin began keeping a diary of her bus commutes in the Notes app on her iPhone 5c, writing down the interesting things and people she saw in a Perecquian homage to Bus Lines 91 and 92, which she took from her apartment in the 5th Arrondissement to her teaching job in the 7th. Reading the notice, she decided to be vigilant when using her phone: she would carry out a public transport vigil, using it to take in the world around her and notice all the things she would miss if she continued using it the way she had been, the way everyone does--to surf the web, check social media, maintain her daily sense of self through digital interaction. Her goal became to observe the world through the screen of her phone, rather than using her phone to distract from the world. During the course of that academic year, the Charlie Hebdo attacks occurred and Elkin had an ectopic pregnancy, requiring emergency surgery. At that point, her diary of dailiness became a study of the counterpoint between the everyday and the Event, mediated through early twenty-first century technology, and observed from the height of a bus seat. No. 91/92 is a love letter to Paris, and a meditation on how it has changed in the two decades the author has lived there, evolving from the twentieth century into the twenty-first, from analog to digital.