Showing titles in France

The fateful days and weeks surrounding June 6th, 1944, have been extensively documented in histories of the Second World War, but less attention has been paid to the tremendous impact of these events on the populations nearby. The Lost Paratroopers of Normandy tells the inspiring yet heartbreaking story of ordinary people who did extraordinary things in defense of liberty and freedom.

Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an "American society" - one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy's winners and losers in today's France has replaced the old left-right split, leaving many on "the periphery".

No one knows a city like the people who live there - so who better to relate the history of Paris than its inhabitants through the ages? Taking us from 1750 to the new millennium, Graham Robb's Parisians is at once an audiobook to lose yourself in, to dip in and out of at leisure, and to return to again and again - rather like the city itself, in fact.

The fifth in the new Naxos AudioBooks series "In a Nutshell", The French Revolution is a short and accessible introduction to one of the most important periods in European history. It brings vividly to life the implacable Robespierre, the frightened Marie Antoinette and the iconic image of the guillotine. But it also demonstrates the key role the Revolution played in the development of European politics.

The Franco-Prussian War started in 1870 when Otto von Bismarck engineered a war with the French Second Empire under Napoleon III, as part of his plan to unite Prussia with the southern German states as a new Germany. Stephen Badsey examines the build-up, battles, and impact of the war, which was an overwhelming Prussian victory with massive consequences.

This audiobook centres around the Sun King and his relationship with numerous and fascinating women. Naturally dividing into five parts, it concentrates on the King's mother, Anne of Austria; his first important mistress, Louise de la Valliere; Athenais Marquise de Montespan, who acted as unofficial Queen of Versailles; Marie Therese, his wife, of course; and Madame de Maintenon, governess to the illegitimate royal children.

Written in the form of a letter to a Frenchman, Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France is an impassioned attack on the French Revolution and its hasty destruction of the Church, the old elites, and the Crown. Burke tackles the new republic and its allegiance to principles such as liberty and equality, as well as its failure to recognize the complexities of human nature, society, and wisdom accumulated over time, contending that gradual change and adjustment is far better than immediate upheaval.

The Hundred Years' War: A Captivating Guide to One of the Most Notable Conflicts of the Middle Ages and in European History and the Life of Joan of Arc contains two captivating manuscripts in one audiobook: The Hundred Years’ War: A Captivating Guide to the Conflicts Between the English House of Plantagenet and the French House of Valois That Took Place During the Middle Ages and Joan of Arc: A Captivating Guide to a Heroine of France and Her Role During the Lancastrian Phase of the Hundred Years’ War.

Saviez-vous que la Lutèce des origines ne se situait pas sur l'île de la Cité, mais à Nanterre ? Que les derniers combattants gaulois massacrés par les Romains reposent sous la tour Eiffel ? Que les vestiges de la première cathédrale de Paris se trouvent sous le parking d'un immeuble moderne du Ve arrondissement ?

Juni 1940: Hitlers Wehrmacht hat Frankreich besiegt. Die Gestapo fahndet nach Heinrich Mann und Lion Feuchtwanger, nach Hannah Arendt, Franz Werfel und unzähligen anderen, die in Frankreich seit 1933 Asyl gefunden haben. Sie alle müssen fliehen und geraten schließlich nach Marseille, um von dort einen Weg in die Freiheit zu suchen. Derweil riskiert der Amerikaner Varian Fry sein Leben, um die Verfolgten außer Landes zu schmuggeln. Szenisch dicht erzählt Uwe Wittstock die aufwühlende Geschichte ihrer Flucht unter tödlichen Gefahren, von unfassbarem Mut und größter Verzweiflung, von trotziger Hoffnung und Mitmenschlichkeit in düsterer Zeit.

Paris—city of love, food, culture—is steeped in a rich history known the world over. From the creative minds of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who both frequented the world-famous Moulin Rouge at the turn of the twentieth century, to the many historic changes that saw Paris expand into the city of twenty arrondissements that residents and tourists flock to every year. In A Brief History of Paris, historian Cecil Black entertainingly details the stories behind the culture, locations, architecture, people, food and more that keeps visitors enchanted.

In one of the most inventive travel books in years, Ina Caro invites listeners on 25 one-day train trips that depart from Paris and transport us back through 700 years of French history. Whether taking us to Orléans to evoke the visions of Joan of Arc or to the Place de la Concorde to witness the beheading of Marie Antoinette, Caro animates history with her lush descriptions of architectural splendors and tales of court intrigue. "[An] enchanting travelogue" (Publishers Weekly), Paris to the Past has become one of the classic guidebooks of our time.

Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette shared a singularly extraordinary friendship, one involved in the making of two revolutions - and two nations. Jefferson first met Lafayette in 1781, when the young French-born general was dispatched to Virginia to assist Jefferson, then the state’s governor, in fighting off the British. The charismatic Lafayette, hungry for glory, could not have seemed more different from Jefferson, the reserved statesman.

Francis I (1494-1547) was inconstant, amorous, hotheaded and flawed. Yet he was also arguably the most significant king that France ever had. This is his story. A contemporary of Henry VIII of England, Francis saw himself as the first Renaissance king, a man who was the exemplar of courtly and civilised behaviour throughout Europe. A courageous and heroic warrior, he was also a keen aesthete, an accomplished diplomat and an energetic ruler who turned his country into a force to be reckoned with.

France is in a rut, and so is French cuisine. Twenty-five years ago it was hard to have a bad meal in France; now, in some cities and towns, it is a challenge to find a good one. For the first time in the annals of modern cooking, the most influential chefs and the most talked-about restaurants in the world are not French. Within France, large segments of the wine industry are in crisis, cherished artisanal cheeses are threatened with extinction, and bistros and brasseries are disappearing at an alarming rate.

Emerging from France's catastrophic 1940 defeat like a bedraggled and rather sinister phoenix, the French State – better known to history as Vichy France or the Vichy Regime after its spa-town capital, stands in history as a unique and bizarre creation of German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler's European conquests. A patchwork of paradoxes and contradictions, the Vichy Regime maintained a quasi-independent French nation for some time after the Third Reich invasion.

To this day Marie Antoinette remains one of history’s most misunderstood heroines. How she triumphed over the petty jealousies and backstairs rivalries of the court, how she sustained a good-hearted but malleable king, and how she was transformed from French queen to Austrian “whore,” is the story told with skill and fascinating detail.

FNH Audio presents a slightly abridged performance of this fourth volume of Charles Oman's military history classic. In this fourth volume, a detailed examination is made of the period from December 1810 to December 1811. This volume covers the battles of Gebora, Barrosa, Fuentes de Ornon, Albuera and the seiges of Badajoz and Tarragona.

When a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille in July 1789, it triggered an event of global consequence: the overthrow of the monarchy and the birth of a new society. Most historians account for the French Revolution by viewing it in retrospect as the outcome of underlying conditions such as a faltering economy, social tensions, or the influence of Enlightenment thought. But what did Parisians themselves think they were doing—how did they understand their world? What were the motivations and aspirations that guided their actions?

Après l'immense succès de "Métronome", Lorànt Deutsch met une nouvelle fois son formidable talent de conteur au service de l'Histoire de notre pays. Des voies romaines aux sentiers de Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle, le comédien nous entraîne dans une promenade érudite et passionnante sur ces routes qui ont façonné la France. On s'émerveille avec lui des vestiges de notre passé, on frémit des terribles crimes qui l'ont accompagné et on se régale des innombrables anecdotes romanesques qui parsèment son récit.