The Other Americans in Paris: Businessmen, Countesses, Wayward Youth, 1880-1941 (Paperback)

Nancy L. Green (author)

£20.00

Paperback 336 Pages / Published: 27/10/2015

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Synopsis

While Gertrude Stein hosted the literati of the Left Bank, Mrs. Bates-Batcheller, an American socialite and concert singer in Paris, held sumptuous receptions for the Daughters of the American Revolution in her suburban villa. History may remember the American artists, writers, and musicians of the Left Bank best, but the reality is that there were many more American businessmen, socialites, manufacturers' representatives, and lawyers living on the other side of the River Seine. Be they newly minted American countesses married to foreigners with impressive titles or American soldiers who had settled in France after World War I with their French wives, they provide a new view of the notion of expatriates. Nancy L. Green thus introduces us for the first time to a long-forgotten part of the American overseas population-predecessors to today's expats-while exploring the politics of citizenship and the business relationships, love lives, and wealth (and poverty for some) of Americans who staked their claim to the City of Light. The Other Americans in Paris shows that elite migration is a part of migration tout court and that debates over Americanization have deep roots in the twentieth century.

Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226324463
Number of pages: 336
Weight: 494 g
Dimensions: 229 x 152 x 19 mm

MEDIA REVIEWS

"Green's greatest achievement in The Other Americans in Paris is to shed light on a unique group of American migrants in Paris, one that has hitherto been largely absent from the literature on the subject. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly for migration scholars, Green refutes the dominant narrative that elite migration is a relatively recent phenomenon born out of globalization."--Leslie Page Moch "International Migration Review"
"Historians of international migration are undoubtedly familiar with the literary Americans living in Paris in the 1920s but only rarely have they incorporated such migrants into their scholarly field of study. With The Other Americans in Paris, Green gives migration historians ample reason to re-visit and to re-think both Paris (as a unique host society) and Americans as emigrants and immigrants. Green appreciates and documents the individual idiosyncrasies of American businessmen, soldiers, wayward countesses, 'expats, ' and working-class wanderers, even while making mobility, community organization, and transcultural contacts and misunderstandings--bread and butter issues for migration historians--central themes in her very readable account of Paris's American 'colony.'"--Donna Gabaccia "University of Minnesota"
"With her keen sense of the French American difference, her deep understanding of the vicissitudes of migration, and her incomparable wit, Nancy L. Green has transformed the literary cliche about Americans in Paris into an original and compelling social history. Whether she is taking us into the territory of marriage and divorce, which inspired Edith Wharton and Henry James with their best plots, unearthing consular records of American misdeeds, or tracking down the capture of Baby Cadum soaps by Palmolive, she surprises and delights on every page. The Other Americans in Paris will captivate historians of business, cultural critics, political scientists and, most of all, tourists and expats discovering life in the City of Light."--Alice Kaplan "Yale University"