The Invention of Paris is a tour through the streets and history of the French capital under the guidance of radical Parisian author and publisher Eric Hazan.Hazan reveals a city whose squares echo with the riots, rebellions and revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Combining the raconteur's ear for a story with a historian's command of the facts, he introduces an incomparable cast of characters: the literati, the philosophers and the artists - Balzac, Bau...

Dans les années 1790, pour le grand leader whig Charles James Fox, la Révolution française était "l'événement le plus important qui se soit jamais produit dans le monde". Depuis, avec le passage de l'actualité à l'Histoire, la Révolution a gardé son pouvoir de fascination. Le sujet n'est pas neutre : une importante école historique considère la Révolution comme un trouble malencontreux venu bouleverser de façon sanglante le mouvement général vers le libéralisme. Le présent livre s'inscrit ...

Places royales et faubourgs brumeux, enceintes, barricades et passages, c'est la trame serrée des quartiers parisiens qui organise cette déambulation proposée aux flâneurs des rues et des livres.On y voit naître, au rythme des enceintes successives, l'éclairage public, l'enfermement des pauvres et des fous, le numérotage des maisons, les terrasses des cafés et la police de proximité. Du Marais des Précieuses au XIe arrondissement des "branchés", on assiste aux migrations de la mode...

" Mon trajet est plutôt diurne et va d'Ivry à Saint-Denis, il suit à peu près la ligne de partage entre l'est et l'ouest parisiens ou, si l'on veut, le méridien de Paris. Cet itinéraire, je l'ai choisi sans réfléchir mais dans un deuxième temps il m'a sauté aux yeux que ce n'était pas un hasard, que ce tracé suivait les méandres d'une existence commencée près du jardin du Luxembourg, menée pendant longtemps face à l'Observatoire et poursuivie au moment où j'écris plus à l'est, à Belleville...

Eric Hazan, author of the acclaimed The Invention of Paris, leads us by the hand in this walk from Ivry to Saint-Denis, passing such familiar landmarks as the Luxembourg Gardens, the Pompidou Centre, the Gare du Nord and Montmartre, as well as little-known alleyways and arcades. Filled with historical anecdotes, geographical observations and literary references, Hazan's walk guides us through an unknown Paris.He shows us how, through planning and modernisation, the city's r...

We have witnessed a beginning, the birth of a new age of revolt and upheaval. In North Africa and the Middle East it took the people a matter of days to topple what were supposedly entrenched regimes. Now, to the west, multiple crises are etching away at a 'democratic consensus' that has, since the 1970s, plagued and suppressed any sparks of revolutionary potential. It is time to prepare for the coming insurrection.In this bold and beautifully written book, Eric Hazan and Kamo prov...

Since the disastrous Pompidou years, working-class Paris has been steadily nibbled away, either by destruction or more insidiously by a kind of internal colonization. Take for example a small outlying district populated by Arabs, blacks and poor whites twenty years ago, the L'Olive neighbourhood north of La Chapelle The area is noted as pleasant, people frequent it and explore it, and as the rents are low some settle there. Others follow, first friends and then anyone else. Rents go up, bu...

Un livre d’histoire ? oui et non. Oui, parce qu’on y parcourt quelque 220 ans d’émeutes, soulèvements, insurrections et révolutions, depuis la prise de la Bastille jusqu’à la chute de Ben Ali et Moubarak en passant par Juin 1848, la Commune de Paris, les révolutions russes de 1905 et 1917, celles d’Allemagne, de Chine, d’Espagne, de Cuba, la Commune de Shanghai, l’insurrection zapatiste... Non, parce qu’on n’y trouve pas les descriptions « objectives » habituelles, ni les considérations mo...

All’ombra della torre Eiffel, attorno alle guglie di Nôtre-Dame, nel cuore del Quartiere Latino risuona l’eco di una storia antica.È la storia di Parigi, la più stupefacente delle capitali europee, meta obbligata per milioni di turisti che la attraversano distratti, abbagliati da poche tappe da cartolina.Il libro è una guida al mondo variegato dei quartieri, così diversi l’uno dall’altro, alle strade dimenticate ma brulicanti di vita che il turismo di massa sfiora appena, all...

In Balzac's vast Human Comedy, a body of ninety-one completed novels and stories, he endeavoured to create a complete picture of contemporary French society and manners. Within this work is a loving ode to Paris and an incomparable introduction to the first capital of the modern world.To this ageless city he makes a declaration of love in an accumulation of finely observed detail - the caf�s, landmarks, avenues, parks - and captures the populace in countless meticulously d...

In the history of European revolutions, the barricade stands as a glorious emblem. Its symbolic importance arises principally from the barricades of Eric Hazan's native Paris, where they were instrumental in the revolts of the nineteenth century, helping to shape the political life of a continent.The barricade was always a makeshift construction (the word derives from barrique or barrel), and in working-class districts these ersatz fortifications could spread like wildfire...

The assault on the Bastille, the Reign of Terror, Danton mocking his executioner, Robespierre dispensing a fearful justice, and the archetypal gadfly Marat - the events and figures of the French Revolution have exercised a hold on the historical imagination for more than 200 years. It has been a template for heroic insurrection and, to more conservative minds, a cautionary tale.Looking at history from the bottom up, Hazan presents the revolution as a rational and pure struggle for e...