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….
Maurice Druon finally ran out of immortality. That apparently happens to us all, but what made his case special was that he was officially an immortel, thanks to membership in the Académie Française. Only 40 Frenchmen at a time can…
The Euro: The Politics of the New Global Currency By David Marsh (Yale University Press, 352 Pages, $35) Imagine, if you can, that the federal government abolishes the dollar. Just does it because our betters have determined, in their wisdom,…
First of all, let’s get one thing straight: I am not the father of Rachida Dati’s new baby. Admittedly that disclaimer might be superfluous, because of all the many names mentioned since the birth of Zohra, mine is not yet…