Joseph A. Harriss
Crisis reveals character. The French, a creative, artistic, and — by their own account — intelligent people, are not at their best in times that require steady nerves. The country’s costly, self-imposed crisis over pension reform reveals, once again, the…
The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers By Richard McGregor (Harper, 302 pages, $27.99) The question is, how do they do it? They starved some 35 million Chinese in the late 1950s during Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward….
From the Champs-Elysées to Saint Germain des Près, the Bastille to posh Passy, Paris is the undisputed capital of girl watching. And with their pert presence, sense of style, and fashion flair, the ladies in question are indeed well worth…
Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine, and the End of France By Michael Steinberger (Bloomsbury, 256 pages, $25) We have it on the authority of none other than Nicolas Sarkozy that France has the best gastronomy in the world….
Living in Paris is one of our oldest traditions. It started in 1776 with Ben Franklin, who spent eight enjoyable years wrangling loans, military aid, and diplomatic recognition from France — in the process becoming the homespun darling of many…
PARIS — Sometimes life is just so darned unfair. Consider the case of Jacques René Chirac, who retired in May 2007 as president of France and Grand Master of the Legion of Honor. Since then comfortably ensconced in a spacious,…
Flustered French parents hurriedly shooed their children away from the TV last week as a bland discussion program suddenly turned into a torrid description of cruising for gay sex in Asian brothels. “I got into the habit of paying for…
You probably remember: he was so unabashedly pro-American, he so admired our work ethic and free market capitalism, not to mention popular culture, that the French themselves called him Sarko l’Américain. When his Socialist political opponents sneered that Nicolas Sarkozy…
Did you hear the one about the lady who married the Eiffel Tower? No, really. Erika La Tour Eiffel had had other infatuations with objects, including Lance, the bow with which she became an archery champion, and the Berlin Wall….
