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Zusatztext In this evocative! beautifully written! impeccably researched work! Blower joins a handful of historians who have authoritatively demonstrated the virtues of transnational history. Informationen zum Autor Peter T. Paul Assistant Professor of history at Boston University. Klappentext Americans often look back on Paris between the World Wars as a charming escape from the problems and politics of home. In this bold and original study, Brooke Blower shows that nothing could be further from the truth. Drawing on a range of sources in French as well as English, she uncovers the breadth of American activities in the capital, the lessons visitors drew from their stay, and the passionate responses they elicited from others. For many sojourners-not just for those most famous expatriates- Paris served as an important crossroads, a place where Americans reimagined their position in the world and grappled with what it meant to be American in the new century, even as they came up against conflicting interpretations of American power by others. Interwar Paris may have been a capital of the arts, notorious for its pleasures, but it was also a city on the brink-a tinderbox smoldering with radical and reactionary plots, suffused with noise, filth, and chaos, teeming with immigrants and refugees, Communist rioters, fascist admirers, overzealous police, and obnoxious tourists. Sketching Americans' place in this evocative landscape, Blower shows how arrivals were drawn into the capital's battles, both wittingly and unwittingly. As a result, Americans in Paris found themselves on the front lines of an emerging culture of political engagements-a transatlantic matrix of causes and connections, which encompassed debates about "Americanization" and rising forms of "anti-American" protest as well as a host of international controversies, such as those surrounding the Sacco-Vanzetti affair and plans for an American Legion parade down the Champs-Elysées. A model for writing urban, transnational history, this book offers a nuanced portrait of how Americans helped to shape the cultural politics of interwar Paris, and, at the same time, how Paris helped to shape modern American political culture. Zusammenfassung Overturning the old American clichés about "Gay Paree" or the "City of Lights," Becoming Americans in Paris offers a darker and more nuanced portrait of how Americans helped to shape the cultural politics of Paris between the wars, and, at the same time, how Paris helped to shape modern American political culture. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction: The Age of World Wars Part I: The Specter of Americanization 1.: Triumphant Arrivals 2.: Reluctant Hosts Part II: Parisian Cultural Politics 3.: The Sacco-Vanzetti Riots 4.: Prefect Chiappe's Purging of Paris Part III: American Political Culture 5.: Legionnaires on Parade 6.: The Expatriates Reconsidered Epilogue: The Beginning of American Innocence Notes Bibliography Index ...
