The Belle Époque

Very excellent and in-depth descriptions of what the Belle Epoque was, what characters were in it and why it developed. Very detailed. It helps to have been to Paris so that the areas discussed come to mind. But the writer does a good job of bringing the city to the reader.
Throughout the read I always had the semi uncomfortable feeling that I was hovering above the activity, though. I never really felt involved, like I was THERE, the way one would in reading a good biography. I think this should have been the biography of an era so that one does not feel outside the action so much. Overall it is a very well done piece and if you want to get an idea of what the Belle Epoque was, this will be a good source.

With The Belle Epoque the late Dominique Kalifa gave us a magnificent and very detailed portrait of France and its civilization from the tail-end of the 19th century to the beginning of WWI.

From its artistic avant gardes to its fledgling technological progresses (electricity, automobiles, filmmaking,..etc.) Kalifa covers all the significant changes that profoundly altered all aspects of French society during the optimistic and peaceful years leading to the Grande Guerre. But it's when the author starts to explain the notion of Belle Epoque and how it came to be used almost 20 years later that the book becomes really fascinating. It was in 1940 on Radio Paris that it was heard in France for the first time after the Germans had started to occupy the country. Kalifa explains with brio how the expression came to represent a longing for better times, times unfortunately gone, for a humiliated nation in "search of lost time" a nation looking back longingly and nostalgically at 15 years of peace, optimism and joie de vivre, and how la Belle Epoque and its images have influenced us overhere in France ever since.
On a more personal level, I remembered while reading this captivating and very engrossing book that back in the late 70s I actually got into trouble in high school with one history professor because I couldn't conciliate Belle Epoque and Affaire Dreyfuss. La Belle wasn't so beautiful after all.....Mais ça c'est une autre histoire...


Kudos to Ms. Susan Emanuel for her wonderful translation and many thanks to Netgalley and Columbia University Press for the opportunity to read this wonderful book

You wouldn’t find this book even if you’d google it. Unless you know the authors name by heart. But we should find it, it’s an interesting book to read.