When Paris Sizzled

Thanks Rowman & Littlefield and netgalley for this ARC.

Mary McAuliffe always gives it to us straight but she writes with just enough humor to make it fun to read history. I love books like this because it makes reading novels from the time period more meaningful and rich.

Terrific Overview of Parisian culture in 1920's This is a highly readable account of an exciting time in Parisian cultural history. At times, it read like a Vanity Fair article with cultural celebrity names dropping from the sky left and right. The author depicts a very close cultural community out of which great art was created--and the personal lives that shaped it.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book, and will most likely read it again.

Paris in the 1920's is the stuff of legend, celebrated in novels, memoirs, songs, and movies. McAuliffe's thoroughly researched book chronicles the decade touching on seemingly everyone from bartenders to socialites commissioning homes from Le Corbusier.

Her chronicle is organized year by year, touching on a wide-range of figures, each appearing as needed with interesting stories and activities.

Some figures, as you would expect, loom large, for example Hemingway and Joyce. Others, F Scott Fitzgerald for instance, appear only occasionally. Considering how thorough the book is, I can only assume that here the legend is larger than the fact.

She doesn't ignore larger movements, for example the rise of Facist movements or the influx of American tourists, in her tale that is mainly focused on individuals. I liked the balance because the wider world and its concerns is there just enough to provide the context that shows why the French call this decade the "crazy years."

While the book is fascinating from beginning to end, I really loved her final chapter on 1929. Here in the US we tend to think this decade ended abruptly with the Stock Market Crash in October 1929. However McAuliffe shows us the signs that, at least in France, these years were coming to an end throughout that year.

I loved this book as history of my favorite kind -- people-focused stories providing us with wonderful social history.

I felted very immersed in the time period and loved all the historical characters referenced. You could feel that the book was well researched, and it brought the time period to life. A great glimpse of Paris in the 20s!

I received a free electronic copy of this book from Netgalley, Rowman & Littlefield, and Mary McAuliffe in exchange for an honest review. Thanks, folks, for sharing your work with me!

Paris between the World Wars was a magnet for artistic souls from around the world. Authors, painters, designers of all sorts, musicians, architects, actors, dancers - Paris was the perfect environment to nurture the hearts of those so blessed. Mary McAuliffe shares with us the excitement and growth of the arts from that period, the personalities and quirks that those talented people brought to their environment and their work. I learned much here through this work, and it brought back to me tales from my father, who adored the talents of that time. I recommend highly to anyone interested in history or the arts.

When Paris Sizzled by Mary McAuliffe

The subtitle “The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends” was the one that really drew me in for this book. Being a Francophile, the title “When Paris Sizzled” was enough to catch my attention. But, being a fashion journo, the name Chanel was just too irresistible.

A history book written in a conversational style, author Mary McAuliffe brings readers to the 1920s Paris. While the roaring twenties were in full swing in America, the French calls this serendipitous decade as the Fabulous 1920s. And thus, a time “When Paris Sizzled.”

A true coffee table book, “When Paris Sizzled” can easily turn into a great conversation starter especially if your guest(s) scan it. Historically accurate, there are so many tidbits of information presented Page Six style that you can actually open the book in any page and find a conversation topic about a historical figure.

Short of saying “Oh la la!” Page Six editors, reporters and readers will feel at home in the 1920s Paris with all the gossip-worthy celebrities and almost famous personas, who by the way actually became famous.

I will say this again, the print copy is a great coffee table book. But, you need to get an e-book copy also so that you can carry it with you! It’s an addictive read!

“When Paris Sizzled” is Rated T for Teens.

My first thought when I saw the title was that Paris has pretty much always sizzled. It certainly did during the Revolution, in a terrible way—then in the years immediately following the Terror, Paris came alive creatively; anyone could write and mount a play, which meant women, for the first time ever.

Then there was George Sand’s long lifetime, which covered a couple political ructions—Paris sizzled right along, replete with amazing personalities doing fascinating things in art, music, the sciences, architecture, etc.

McAuliffe gives a slight nod in this direction:

This was not a phenomenon that suddenly occurred in 1920. Many of the most colorful features of the Parisian twenties had roots going back to the war or even before . . .The frivolity and excesses of “les annees folles” followed as a natural response to death and destruction, whether as a kind of doom-infused escapism or simply as a desire to have fun.

But this book focuses on the twenties, beginning with the end of World War I, and ending in 1929, when Wall Street crashed in the USA, and in Paris, a number of key people either died or moved away, after ten years of what sometimes seemed like one long mad party.

After introducing the majority of her cast, McAuliffe structures her epic tale year by year, building a vivid picture of the cultural cauldron that centered around Montparnasse because it was cheap and unfashionable. So many musicians, artists, writers, dancers, architects, poets, choreographers, photographers and sculptors came there determined to make names for themselves. People fell in and out of love, allied, fought, broke up, gathering at Le Bouef sur la Tiot or the Jockey Club, or at the glittering parties given by famous hostesses.

Life was not easy for most of them. We’re furnished vivid details about those hopefuls: for example, Soutine (a Russian-born painter) and Modigliani (Italian) shared a studio where, an acquaintance once reported on visiting late one night, “I saw them lying on the floor surrounded by a water-filled trench to ward off bedbugs. Each held a candle, by which Modigliani was reading Dante.”

Cole Porter—who married money—Charles De Gaulle—a military man with ambitiouns—Marie Curie—Coco Chanel—Ernest Hemingway—Gertrude Stein—Cocteau and Renoir and Kiki the model and the Duke of Westminster, richest man on the planet, all get their stories woven in year by year, among anecdotes of the Dadaists, whose aficionados tended toward destructive exhibitions a bit more than experimental art. Some of that was supposed to be art: at a concert called Ballet Mecanique, by George Antheil, that seems to have been mostly composed of whistles, coffee grinders, hammers, and a plane propeller (that blew the wig off one audience member), a riot broke out.

As his sponsor said philosophically, “At least George Antheil had a hearing, and an uproarious one at that. From a Dada point of view, one couldn’t have anything better.”

We learn who inspired whom, who helped and hurt whom (some did both, like the complex siren Misia Sert), who succeeded and who failed. Some died very young, others went on to write longingly about those vanished years in the decades to come.

It’s an absorbing book, full of detail and personality, bolstered by a formidable bibliography that is almost worth the price of the book in itself, and replete with footnotes that unfortunately, are maddening in e-book form, as one has to slide back and forth. But worth it—everything worth. This is a keeper.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

When Paris Sizzled tells the story of les années folles, from the end of World War I through the end of the 1920s, in Paris. The book touches on the important players in all forms of art, some entrepreneurs, and some politics, too.

I have previously read books that focused on the Hemingways, Murhpys, and Fitzgeralds and their time in France. I enjoyed getting to know more about what else was going on in Paris during that time period. My one complaint about the book would be that after reading a few paragraphs about one person, you would transition without warning to talking about someone else, completely unrelated to the previous topic. However, given the breadth covered in this book, I really can’t think of a better way to do it, and once I got used to the style, it wasn’t so distracting.

I would recommend the book to anyone looking for an overview of what life was like in Paris in the 1920s. They could then go on to read more detailed accounts of the parts that most catch their fancy. For me, I especially enjoyed reading the parts about Sylvia Beach and André Citroën.

A portrait of Paris in the 1920s told year by year. This makes for a fairly fractured narrative but that very narrative is fascinating enough to carry the reader along. There was a lot going on in Paris at the time and it’s all reflected in this well-researched and comprehensive account. All the notables of the time are encountered here, from Picasso to Gertrude Stein, Man Ray to Andre Citroen, James Joyce to Jean Cocteau. A kaleidoscope of art, music, invention and fun. Great portrait of an unforgettable era.

This author sets a fascinating and elaborate table of the shining lights of Paris, pre WW2. We get to organize these wonderful artists according to who they knew, their relationships, their wildly varying characters and what each did. Getting to know them in context is much more interesting than studying each on his/her own. Paris truly did sizzle and if you,ve never been there I can tell you it's still smokin,.

Pris at the 20's is the best time ever, not necessary for live but for watch at this moment is just awesome

The 1920's my favorite period. Mostly, because I am enchanted by the very F. Scott Fitzgerald themes of opulence and ultimately doomed dreams, but also because the period was was just home to so many interesting historical figures. Last December, Christmas Day in fact, I visited Paris and it was only then that I began to see some of the figures from this book come to life all around me. It's a straight-forward, interesting window into the past. I loved this book.

The story of Paris and its inhabitants both local and foreign emerging from the horrors of World War and almost desperately trying to take back the lost years by engaging in a spell of unhindered abandon of pleasure and throwing back all inhibitions and standards of years past.


The 1920s of Paris with its history of rich and well known names from Hemingway, Jo Barker, Joyce, Cocteau make up for a heady background of how the rich, the not so rich and the poor fared in this city. Change in every sphere not just entertainment but Art, architecture and then something unexpected, the change in behavior.

There did not seem to be any holds barred and life for those living in Paris knew no boundaries. Fascinating account of how life was lived and loved and how tradition was overthrown for living life to the fullest. It also depicts the rise of an undercurrent of unrest which will have unhappy consequences in the not so distant future.

For people with a penchant for history, also for those with a liking for Paris, and for what the city has been - just different.