I love to read anything about Paris, and this book was no exception. I love this era and reading about all of the various characters the book covers.

Very informative and compelling book that contains stories about a set of brilliant individuals that found themselves in the city of light between the Wall Street Crash and German occupation.

Because of this incredible book, I was able to find myself in a circle of Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gide, Marie Curie, Picasso, Stravinsky, the fabulous Coco Chanel, and Elsa Schiaparelli, sassy Josephine Baker, my hero Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, Man Ray, and Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, also Renoir, Dali. This book provides many more interesting facts about each character's life, their friendships, and struggles. The book's purpose is to focus on each individual's lives during the late 1920s and thru 1940, however, the reader is also given an opportunity to learn a bit more of their backgrounds prior to 1929.

Mary McAuliffe did a brilliant job of researching the facts and putting everything together into an astonishing novel. Thank you Rowman & Littlefield Publishers and NetGalley for a copy of this amazing book.

I am sorry that I couldn’t get through this book. It has boring, mundane details and reads like a textbook.

In Paris on the Brink, Mary McAuliffe offers anecdotes about the Famous People of Paris in the 1930s, stringing them together with loose connections while at the same time providing some context about the French, American, and international political climates of the period. This would have been a fun and entertaining book--albeit not one that has anything new to say about this period or its people--if it weren't for some curiously old-fashioned and problematic writing choices. McAuliffe often refers to women by their first names but men by their last, a misogynist practice that most editors would have insisted be changed, and her use of ableist terms like "crazy" and "a nutcase" are inappropriate and offensive.

PARIS ON THE BRINK portrays the City of Light during the turbulent 1930s, from the Wall Street Crash of 1929 to the war and German Occupation — a dangerous decade with Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini on the rise and the Spanish civil war in full force. Amid the turmoil stood Paris as Europe’s cultural heart, drawing an enviable artistic crowd never quite seen before or since: Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Gide, Marie Curie, Picasso, Stravinsky, and Coco Chanel, as well as Josephine Baker, Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, Man Ray, and Le Corbusier, plus Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Renoir, Dalí, and Elsa Schiaparelli. Rich illustrations and a stirring narrative by historian and author Mary McAuliffe breathe 1930s Paris to life.

Pub Date 13 Sep 2018

Thanks to Rowman & Littlefield and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are fully mine.

#ParisOnTheBrink #NetGalley

If only I could go back in time and live in the Paris of the 1930s....just think of all the amazing talent there! Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and more. Since I don't have a TARDIS to get me to 1930s Paris just yet, the next best thing is to read Dr. Mary McAuliffe's brilliant Paris on the Brink.

McAuliffe chronicles the city of light through the 1930s, the depression, and into WWII. It's an excellent overview and such fun to read. I highly recommend this fun and entertaining book.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

What a dazzling cast of characters occupied Paris in the 1930s. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, the art-collecting Steins, Picasso, Sartre, De Beauvoir, Chanel, Nabokov, Colette, Le Courbusier, Dalí--and that's just the obvious ones. Mary McAuliffe introduces us to dozens not famous enough to be known by only one name but, even so, amazing talent in art, literature and living well--even during The Great Depression.
Then came WWII. Life in Paris became inhospitable for many--especially Jews, intellectuals, homosexuals and Surrealists. Many fled. Some, notably Chanel, Cocteau and Picasso, chose to stay.
I read this book with enormous pleasure. (I would have loved living in Paris during the '30s--despite the privations.) I only wish that the characters had been more completely fleshed out. In some instances we are given only tantalizing glimpses. But, then, this would have been a book of 1,000+ pages..
In all, this is a masterful book by a scholar (Ms. McAuliffe has a Ph.D in history) who writes in a way that's both educational and entertaining.

Love this book. Does an excellent job of examining Paris, though its arts, while the world dealt with the after-effects of the war, the Age of Anxiety, and the global Depression.