The Greater Journey
Americans in Paris
By
David McCullough
Are you looking for summer reading? Take a look at the New York Times Best Sellers List, you may find something you are interested in: http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/overview.html
The number one spot, on their Hardcover list, is by one of my favorite authors and historians, David McCullough, The Greater Journey, Americans in Paris, published by Simon & Schuster, New York, New York, May 2011.
There is something about Paris, which stirs the romantic soul, like little else. I would like to think that I remember every arrival, departure, and minute I have spent in this enchanting city. Expatriate artists, such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, first drew me to Paris with tales of their lives interacting with each other and the streets of the city; but while McCullough has written a tale of expatriates, it is not to this group which he devotes his perfect pen. Rather this is the story of those that came before World War I and the debate of a lost generation.
The Greater Journey focuses on an Americans who went to Paris between 1830 and 1900. A driven group who sought to learn and grown, seeking opportunities which the young America could yet offer them, such as: Mary Cassatt, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fenimore Cooper, Henry James ,Samuel F. B. Morse, Elizabeth Blackwell, Mark Twain, George P. A. Healy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Sumner, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and John Singer Sargent.
Not only do we learn about these remarkable people’s time in Paris, but we see how their journey impacted them and the United States. We are read how they brought their experiences and newly acquired knowledge home, and perhaps inspired others to go forward to learn in foreign lands. McCullough also gives us a view of Paris in nineteenth century, as she undergoes her own transformation.
How wonderful to have a good summer read!
