Wishing that her father, who has been lost at sea, is really coming home, eleven-year-old Genevieve faces difficult family struggles that include a harsh winter, dwindling money and food, and a mother who is suffering from depression.

Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every corner--in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans. In 1995, Adam Gopnik, his wife, and their infant son left the familiar comforts and hassles of New York City for the urbane glamour of the City of Light. Gopnik is a longtime New Yorker writer, and the magazine has sent its writers to Paris for decades--but his was above all a personal pilgrimage to the place that had for so long been the undisputed capital of everything cultural and beautiful. It was also the opportunity to raise a child who would know what it was to romp in the Luxembourg Gardens, to enjoy a croque monsieur in a Left Bank café--a child (and perhaps a father, too) who would have a grasp of that Parisian sense of style we Americans find so elusive. So, in the grand tradition of the American abroad, Gopnik walked the paths of the Tuileries, enjoyed philosophical discussions at his local bistro, wrote as violet twilight fell on the arrondissements. Of course, as readers of Gopnik's beloved and award-winning "Paris Journals" in The New Yorker know, there was also the matter of raising a child and carrying on with day-to-day, not-so-fabled life. Evenings with French intellectuals preceded middle-of-the-night baby feedings; afternoons were filled with trips to the Musée d'Orsay and pinball games; weekday leftovers were eaten while three-star chefs debated a "culinary crisis."As Gopnik describes in this funny and tender book, the dual processes of navigating a foreign city and becoming a parent are not completely dissimilar journeys--both hold new routines, new languages, a new set of rules by which everyday life is lived. With singular wit and insight, Gopnik weaves the magical with the mundane in a wholly delightful, often hilarious look at what it was to be an American family man in Paris at the end of the twentieth century. "We went to Paris for a sentimental reeducation-I did anyway-even though the sentiments we were instructed in were not the ones we were expecting to learn, which I believe is why they call it an education."

Product Description: Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every corner--in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans...read more

Product Description: A collection of photographs taken by Peter Turnley, rooted in his 25-year affair with one of the most beautiful cities in the world. This volume invites us to share a Paris which outsiders rarely see. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Our modern society is very particular about what constitutes good food: local, seasonal, organic produce that doesn't overly impact on the environment. But throughout history every generation has believed that it alone knows the true value of food, and looked with distaste on the culinary practices of its predecessors. Not so long ago eating food from around the world was the mark of the cultural sophisticate. In The Table Comes First Adam Gopnik envisions a new 'physiology of taste' which will enable us to dispense with this moralising attitude and concentrate on the pleasure principle: food is to be enjoyed, and to help us enjoy life in turn. Above all the dining table should be the heart of the family, the place where all real family begins. To show this we are taken through the courses, from starters to desserts, from the establishment of the first restaurants in Paris in the early 19th century to the green movement of the present day, in a witty and erudite narrative interspersed

A chronicle about raising a family in the middle of Manhattan.

The author of Paris to the Moon describes the author's fall 2000 move from Paris back to New York with his family in a series of essays that profile the teachers, therapists, coaches, friends, adversaries, and others who make up their extended urban family and describe their new home, the impact of 9/11, real estate, and the meaning of life. Reprint. 40,000 first printing.

Product Description: Wayne Thiebaud, the California-based painter, has produced works of complexity and distinction that appear deceptively simple in terms of subject matter and in their presentation yet draw on many historical sources. In fact, Thiebaud is part of the grand tradition of representational art from Chardin and Manet to the American Realist masters such as Eakins and Hopper...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The Wrong Side of Paris, the final novel in Balzac’s The Human Comedy, is the compelling story of Godefroid, an abject failure at thirty, who seeks refuge from materialism by moving into a monastery-like lodging house in the shadows of Notre-Dame...read more

The first new translation of Balzac's novel in more than a century follows Godefroid, a thirty-year-old failure, who seeks refuge at the unusual lodging house of a tragic noblewomen, where he encounters an assortment of men, all scarred by the tumult that followed the French Revolution, who have dedicated their lives to anonymous acts of charity. 10,000 first printing.