Rating: 
Summary: Blah de blah blah..
Review: "A beautiful and bygone era comes to life again in this exquisite chronicle of postwar Paris, elegantly penned by an award-winning American journalist who was there..."Makes it sound thrilling, huh? You should want to dive into the novel and find out every detail of the wonderful Paris in the Fifties. Well, you know what? Yawn! I just got finished reading "Rebecca" by Daphne DuMaurier while I was vacationing in Mexico and I was in a hurry at the Los Angeles airport coming home to find another book for the last couple of hours on the plane. I shoveled out ... (believe me, ... saves a lot!! Always buy before the trip..) from my pocket at an airport book store after I hurriedly found this book. Well, I gave it about 45 minutes (and I read fast, not to forget) and I gave up. This book just did not capture me. I gave it more time after I arrived at home, but soon other books and events captured my attention. I'm not saying that you shouldn't read this book. I mean, if you love Paris, totally love it, try this book. Listen to the other people that have written reviews and enjoyed this book also. Everybody has different tastes, and maybe I just didn't give this book a long enough chance.
Rating: 
Summary: paris in the fifties
Review: As Hemingway said, Paris is a moveable feast. So it was for me during my youth there as a correspondent there more than 40 years ago. My experiences are chronicled in Paris in the Fifties, now out in paperback. It evokes a marvelous place at a magical time - and, I think, reading it may be the next best thing to visiting the city.
Rating: 
Summary: Why are the French the way they are today? Read background.
Review: Chapter 15 on the youth of France is worth the price of the book alone. Times were hard in the 1950s and Karnow knew it and wrote about it. "What do we want? A decent life and I don't know how to attain it", says a 27 year old worker whose wife also works and together have a very limited life. What do the French think about food, work, wine, sex, intellectuals, language, fashion, Coca Cola? It is all here in this delightful book and it is not what Americans think. Yes, it is a report from a foreign country.
Rating: 
Summary: Paris Since '45
Review: I really enjoyed this book. While I won't go over the top and give it a five-star rating, I found it a fascinating look at both French culture and Europe immediately after WWII. The title is a bit misleading - the stories Karnow has to tell are not Paris-specific ans much as they are France-specific. The cultural landmarks one might expect - painters, writers, musicians,filmmakers - expats and natives alike - modernists who filled up city up after the war, during the '50's are notoriously absent, despite the interview-appearances of John Huston, Audrey Hepburn and Ernest Hemingway. Karnow was a stringer for Life Magazine during the '50's and was widely dispatched during his tenure. Rather than a history specifically about the city and its culture during the Eisenhower-era, this book is an omnibus of cultural information - the history of the guillotine, café culture, visits with the crown-princes and princesses of Hollywood, and the beginnings of Algerian resistance to French rule. Karnow's done a fine - and sometimes gripping - job of creating a *petit-histoire* keyhole for us to view his Parisian decade through. While it didn't necessarily cover the bases I had hoped for - (e.g. George Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London')- it filled in a lot of the gaps that lead to the student uprisings in 1968. This book may or may not be for the French-cultural novitiate or for those seeking reprisals of Goddard films, but Karnow's account of Paris - his personal narrative - freights its own reward.
Rating:
Summary: Paris Since '45
Review: I really enjoyed this book. While I won't go over the top and give it a five-star rating, I found it a fascinating look at both French culture and Europe immediately after WWII. The title is a bit misleading - the stories Karnow has to tell are not Paris-specific ans much as they are France-specific. The cultural landmarks one might expect - painters, writers, musicians,filmmakers - expats and natives alike - modernists who filled up city up after the war, during the '50's are notoriously absent, despite the interview-appearances of John Huston, Audrey Hepburn and Ernest Hemingway. Karnow was a stringer for Life Magazine during the '50's and was widely dispatched during his tenure. Rather than a history specifically about the city and its culture during the Eisenhower-era, this book is an omnibus of cultural information - the history of the guillotine, café culture, visits with the crown-princes and princesses of Hollywood, and the beginnings of Algerian resistance to French rule. Karnow's done a fine - and sometimes gripping - job of creating a *petit-histoire* keyhole for us to view his Parisian decade through. While it didn't necessarily cover the bases I had hoped for - (e.g. George Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London')- it filled in a lot of the gaps that lead to the student uprisings in 1968. This book may or may not be for the French-cultural novitiate or for those seeking reprisals of Goddard films, but Karnow's account of Paris - his personal narrative - freights its own reward.
Rating:
Summary: Karnow is excellent!!
Review: I've been to Paris twice. This is a very accurate representation of the one of a kind Paris culture. Excellent stories and personalities. Every second of this book was enjoyable. The only drawback was the difficulty to keep track of the personalities sometimes, other than that, one of the best ever!! A rareity..
Rating:
Summary: Highly readable. Conveys the heart and soul of Paris.
Review: Karnow, with the succinct style of a journalist brings the reader Paris and its people extracted from his writings when he worked for Time Magazine's Paris bureau. He surely could have handed us a dry hit parade of his journalistic coups; instead he gives us insights into the Ville Lumiere and its people in a decade of healing and recovery following WWII. This book is alive. After reading it, you'll better understand why Thomas Jefferson called France every traveller's favorite country after his own..
Rating:
Summary: Highly readable. Conveys the heart and soul of Paris.
Review: Karnow, with the succinct style of a journalist brings the reader Paris and its people extracted from his writings when he worked for Time Magazine's Paris bureau. He surely could have handed us a dry hit parade of his journalistic coups; instead he gives us insights into the Ville Lumiere and its people in a decade of healing and recovery following WWII. This book is alive. After reading it, you'll better understand why Thomas Jefferson called France every traveller's favorite country after his own..
Rating:
Summary: Excellent recounting of France (not just Paris) in the 50s
Review: The title of this excellent book is a misnomer. Although there is a great deal about Paris, the book as a whole rambles over much of France and even the Mediterranean. Beginning in the late 1940s when Karnow first went to Paris on the GI Bill to study and through much of the 1950s when he served with TIME in their Paris office Karnow lived in Paris. This book is a distillation of his memories and notes he kept from that period. Karnow, however, gives himself free rein to range over a host of topics, sometimes delving into French history, if it helps illuminate his topic. The result is a very personal view of France in the fifties. There is a great deal he doesn't discuss, such as French cinema and art in the decade. He writes of some of the literary figures, but not with any especial emphasis. The range of topics that are covered in the book are not encyclopedic but they are exceptionally varied. He will write about wine, food, crime, famous politicians, infamous politicians, housing, French manners, Algerian patriots, people he knew, and a host of other subjects. Some of the chapters could be anticipated, such as a long chapter on French wine and a tour through the French wine districts. Some are unexpected, like a chapter on a man who was the last in a line of hereditary executioners. There is a good deal of name dropping (folks like Samuel Beckett pop in for brief cameos), but not too much. He writes of people whose names remain famous, like Christian Dior, and of many others, especially colleagues, whose names are not so well known. One of the best things about the book is that while it may not give you all the facts about Paris and France in the fifties, it definitely gives you a feel for the time itself. It is also fascinating for what it reveals about the politics of the time. Karnow worked for TIME, which espoused a conservative Republican point of view (though more moderate than what would later characterize the late 1950s NATIONAL REVIEW), while Karnow himself was a liberal. In much of his political writing, therefore, one gets a sense of his take on one things on the one hand and the take of his employers, looking over his shoulder, on the other. The book therefore indirectly tells the story of how much of America felt about France during the fifties. I can wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested either in the years following the war or in France or Paris in general. It is entertaining and informative at the same time. I'd like to add that the photograph on the paperback edition of the book (and I supposed on the dust jacket of the hardback) is one of the most remarkable I have ever seen of Paris. A couple somewhere in Paris (the angles make it look to be somewhere east of Montmartre) looks over Paris with Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower off in the distance.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent recounting of France (not just Paris) in the 50s
Review: The title of this excellent book is a misnomer. Although there is a great deal about Paris, the book as a whole rambles over much of France and even the Mediterranean. Beginning in the late 1940s when Karnow first went to Paris on the GI Bill to study and through much of the 1950s when he served with TIME in their Paris office Karnow lived in Paris. This book is a distillation of his memories and notes he kept from that period. Karnow, however, gives himself free rein to range over a host of topics, sometimes delving into French history, if it helps illuminate his topic. The result is a very personal view of France in the fifties. There is a great deal he doesn't discuss, such as French cinema and art in the decade. He writes of some of the literary figures, but not with any especial emphasis. The range of topics that are covered in the book are not encyclopedic but they are exceptionally varied. He will write about wine, food, crime, famous politicians, infamous politicians, housing, French manners, Algerian patriots, people he knew, and a host of other subjects. Some of the chapters could be anticipated, such as a long chapter on French wine and a tour through the French wine districts. Some are unexpected, like a chapter on a man who was the last in a line of hereditary executioners. There is a good deal of name dropping (folks like Samuel Beckett pop in for brief cameos), but not too much. He writes of people whose names remain famous, like Christian Dior, and of many others, especially colleagues, whose names are not so well known. One of the best things about the book is that while it may not give you all the facts about Paris and France in the fifties, it definitely gives you a feel for the time itself. It is also fascinating for what it reveals about the politics of the time. Karnow worked for TIME, which espoused a conservative Republican point of view (though more moderate than what would later characterize the late 1950s NATIONAL REVIEW), while Karnow himself was a liberal. In much of his political writing, therefore, one gets a sense of his take on one things on the one hand and the take of his employers, looking over his shoulder, on the other. The book therefore indirectly tells the story of how much of America felt about France during the fifties. I can wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested either in the years following the war or in France or Paris in general. It is entertaining and informative at the same time. I'd like to add that the photograph on the paperback edition of the book (and I supposed on the dust jacket of the hardback) is one of the most remarkable I have ever seen of Paris. A couple somewhere in Paris (the angles make it look to be somewhere east of Montmartre) looks over Paris with Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower off in the distance.
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