The Flaneur

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Kate Betts

"For readers of How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are, My Paris Dream is a charming and insightful memoir about coming of age as a fashion journalist in 1980s Paris, by former Vogue and Harper's Bazaar editor Kate Betts, the author of Everyday Icon : Michelle Obama and the Power of Style"-- "As a young woman Kate Betts nursed a dream of striking out on her own and discovering who she was meant to be in Paris. Upon graduation from Princeton and not without trepidation, she took off, renting a room in the apartment of a young 'BCBG' family and throwing herself into Parisian culture, determined to master French slang, style, and savoir-faire, and find a job that would give her a reason to stay. After a series of dues-paying jobs, she began a magnificent apprenticeship at Women's Wear Daily and was initiated into the high fashion world at a moment that saw the last glory of the old guard and the explosion of a new generation of talent. From a woozy yet enchanting Yves Saint Laurent to the mischievous and commanding Karl Lagerfeld, to the riotous, brilliant young guns--Martin Margiela, Helmut Lang, and John Galliano--who were rewriting the rules of fashion, Betts gives us a view of what it looked like to a young American girl, finding herself, falling in love, and exploring this dazzling world all at once. Rife with insider information about restaurants, shopping, travel, and food, Betts's memoir brings the enchantment of France to life--from the nightclubs of Paris where she learned to dance Le Rock, to the lavender fields of Provence and the forests of le Bretagne--in an unforgettable memoir of coming-of-age"--

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David Leavitt

**From Goodreads:** David Leavitt brings the wonders and mysteries of Florence alive, illuminating why it is, and always has been, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. The third in the critically-acclaimed Writer and the City Series-in which some of the world's finest novelists reveal the secrets of the cities they know best-Florence is a lively account of expatriate life in the 'city of the lily'. Why has Florence always drawn so many English and American visitors? (At the turn of the century, the Anglo-American population numbered more than thirty thousand.) Why have men and women fleeing sex scandals traditionally settled here? What is it about Florence that has made it so fascinating-and so repellent-to artists and writers over the years? Moving fleetly between present and past and exploring characters both real and fictional, Leavitt's narrative limns the history of the foreign colony from its origins in the middle of the nineteenth century until its demise under Mussolini, and considers the appeal of Florence to figures as diverse as Tchaikovsky, E.M. Forster, Ronald Firbank, and Mary McCarthy. Lesser-known episodes in Florentine history-the moving of Michelangelo's David, and the construction of temporary bridges by black American soldiers in the wake of the Second World War-are contrasted with images of Florence today (its vast pizza parlors and tourist culture). Leavitt also examines the city's portrayal in such novels and films as *A Room with a View, The Portrait of a Lady* and *Tea with Mussolini*.

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Allen Abel

For his third book, Allen Abel, at the age of forty-three, decided to do a very daring thing - even for a journalist and foreign correspondent. He would move home to Brooklyn, live with his mother (in the same apartment in which he spent his childhood), and explore and write about the borough of his birth. Accompanied sporadically by his thirty-something sister, known affectionately as "Little Debbie," he spent several months wandering along Flatbush Avenue, the thoroughfare that runs like a spine through Brooklyn - from the Manhattan Bridge all the way to a national park on the salt-water shore. The result is a delightful family memoir and exploration of a unique borough by a wryly humorous observer with an eye for an unforgettable character and an ear for a good story. He hobnobs with Mohawk high-steel workers, tries to learn voodoo secrets from Haitian immigrants, commiserates with policemen detailed to the subway (also known as "The Beast") or with beleaguered shopkeepers, and chats with an ex-zookeeper in Prospect Park. He revisits the scenes of his childhood, samples social life in distant Flatlands, and hunts for horseshoe crabs on the shoreline. He is a constant source of entertainment. . Flatbush Odyssey is a revelation - as are all fine travel books - and in it Allen Abel has produced a marvellous piece of storytelling. It is sure to appeal even to those benighted few who have never set foot in Brooklyn.

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Lesley Hazleton

Leaving her home in Seattle in mid-summer to drive "the long way round" to the Detroit auto show, Lesley Hazleton embarks on a five-month journey to visit the holy places for cars - where they are raced, displayed, crashed, tested, and made - as she seeks to understand our deep fascination with automobiles. A committed environmentalist in thrall to the internal combustion engine, Hazleton explores her own worship of speed during assaults on the landspeed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats; negotiates the famed off-road Rubicon Trail across the Sierras; finds the exact spot where James Dean died in his Porsche Spyder; and attends a crash conference in Albuquerque, where her discovery that "when metal and flesh collide, metal always wins," sheds light on our erotic fascination with the automobile. She crushes cars in a Houston junkyard; works the nightshift at the Saturn plant in Tennessee; and in Detroit, turns away from the glitz and gleam of new metal to watch what happens when a car is driven into a million pounds of concrete. Along the way she corresponds with a class of eight-year-olds, befriends a priest who fixes his parishioners' cars, and encounters people and places where cars are created, worshiped, celebrated, and even feared. Halfway through this extraordinary adventure, Hazleton's father, the man who taught her to drive, dies suddenly, and her trip becomes a journey of grief and memory, a deeply personal odyssey that after thirteen thousand miles almost costs her her own life on an ice-bound highway. What begins as a romance takes her deep into the heartland of obsession, evolving into a meditation on life and death as she delves into the soul of a nation and its machine.