Montparnasse

<p>In the third portrait of his series Great Parisian Neighborhoods award-winning raconteur John Baxter takes readers on a dazzling excursion of Montparnasse.</p><p>By the IACP Award-winning author of the national bestseller <em>The Most Beautiful Walk in the World</em> MONTPARNASSE reveals the history and present delights of the iconic neighborhood that is best associated with the vibrant 1920-30s-era Paris--a romantic time and place evoked in Hemingway's memoir <em>A Moveable Feast</em> and Henry Miller's <em>Tropic of Cancer</em>. From the first meeting of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald to their friendship's bitter conclusion; from the courage of the anti-Nazi resistance to the clubs where German generals partied; from the attempted murder of Samuel Beckett to the rise of Josephine Baker to stardom; from the high life of the Coupole and the Cafe du Dôme to the bawdy music halls of rue de la Gaité; no Paris quarter has witnessed more tumultuous events than Montparnasse.</p><p>In a ground-breaking reappraisal of this most glamorous of Paris's districts Baxter looks beyond the nostalgia to the secret history of Montparnasse a district where desire effaced memory and every taste could be satisfied--even those which were unexpressed. If as Oscar Wilde suggested all good Americans went to Paris when they died it was Montparnasse that brought them back to life.</p>