
Twilight of the Belle Epoque
The Paris of Picasso, Stravinsky, Proust, Renault, Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, and Their Friends Through the Great War
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Narrated by:
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Nancy Peterson
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By:
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Mary McAuliffe
About this listen
Mary McAuliffe's Dawn of the Belle Epoque took the listener from the multiple disasters of 1870-1871 through the extraordinary re-emergence of Paris as the cultural center of the Western world. Now, in Twilight of the Belle Epoque, McAuliffe portrays Paris in full flower at the turn of the 20th century, where creative dynamos such as Picasso, Matisse, Stravinsky, Debussy, Ravel, Proust, Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, and Isadora Duncan set their respective circles on fire with a barrage of revolutionary visions and discoveries. Such dramatic breakthroughs were not limited to the arts or sciences, as innovators and entrepreneurs such as Louis Renault, Andre Citroën, Paul Poiret, François Coty, and so many others - including those magnificent men and women in their flying machines - emphatically demonstrated. But all was not well in this world, remembered in hindsight as a golden age, and wrenching struggles between church and state, as well as between haves and have-nots, shadowed these years, underscored by the ever-more-ominous drumbeat of the approaching Great War - a cataclysm that would test the mettle of the City of Light, even as it brutally brought the Belle Epoque to its close.
©2014 Mary S. McAuliffe (P)2021 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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A History of France
- By: John Julius Norwich
- Narrated by: John Julius Norwich
- Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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John Julius Norwich - called a "true master of narrative history" by Simon Sebag Montefiore - returns with the book he has spent his distinguished career wanting to write, A History of France, a portrait of the past two centuries of the country he loves best. Beginning with Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul in the first century BC, this study of French history comprises a cast of legendary characters - Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and Marie Antionette, to name a few - as Norwich chronicles France's often violent, always fascinating history.
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Kings and Wars
- By Awake Tex on 08-22-19
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My Good Life in France
- In Pursuit of the Rural Dream
- By: Janine Marsh
- Narrated by: Esther Wane
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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One grey dismal day, Janine Marsh was on a trip to northern France to pick up some cheap wine. She returned to England a few hours later having put in an offer on a rundown old barn in the rural Seven Valleys area of Pas de Calais. This was not something she'd expected or planned for. Janine eventually gave up her job in London to move with her husband to live the good life in France. Or so she hoped. While getting to grips with the locals and la vie Française, and renovating her dilapidated new house, a building lacking the comforts of mains drainage, heating, or proper rooms.
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Really funny, delightful, informative
- By mz on 10-02-18
By: Janine Marsh
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In the Name of Rome
- The Men Who Won the Roman Empire
- By: Adrian Goldsworthy
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 17 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Adrian Goldsworthy has received wide acclaim for his exceptional writing on the Roman Empire - including high praise from the acclaimed military historian and author John Keegan - and here he offers a new perspective on the empire by focusing on its greatest generals, including Scipio Africanus, Marius, Pompey, Caesar, and Titus.
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This pie was all crust, no filling
- By JLB on 04-11-17
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Paris France
- By: Gertrude Stein
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 2 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Celebrated for her innovative literary bravura, Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) settled into a bustling Paris at the turn of the 20th century, never again to return to her native America. While in Paris, she not only surrounded herself with - and tirelessly championed the careers of - a remarkable group of young expatriate artists but also solidified herself as "one of the most controversial figures of American letters" (New York Times).
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The writing style of Gertrude Stein
- By mamax3 on 10-22-24
By: Gertrude Stein
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The Discovery of France
- A Historical Geography
- By: Graham Robb
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A narrative of exploration - full of strange landscapes and even stranger inhabitants - that explains the enduring fascination of France. While Gustave Eiffel was changing the skyline of Paris, large parts of France were still terra incognita. Even in the age of railways and newspapers, France was a land of ancient tribal divisions, prehistoric communication networks, and pre-Christian beliefs. French itself was a minority language.
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Great history of the cultural formation of France
- By Scotty on 07-31-21
By: Graham Robb
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Other Paris
- By: Luc Sante
- Narrated by: Luc Sante
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on testimony from a great range of witnesses - from Balzac and Hugo to assorted boulevardiers, rabble-rousers, and tramps - Sante, whose thorough research is matched only by the vividness of his narration, takes the listener on a whirlwind tour.
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horrible reading
- By Sergio Remon on 03-28-19
By: Luc Sante
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Empires of the Sea
- The Contest for the Center of the World
- By: Roger Crowley
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Empires of the Sea tells the story of the 50-year world war between Islam and Christianity for the Mediterranean: one of the fiercest and most influential contests in European history. It traces events from the appearance on the world stage of Suleiman the Magnificent through "the years of devastation" when it seemed possible that Islam might master the whole sea, to the final brief flourishing of a united Christendom in 1571.
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Brilliant detail, exciting story
- By Tad Davis on 08-17-08
By: Roger Crowley
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Parisians
- An Adventure History of Paris
- By: Graham Robb
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the Paris you never knew. From the Revolution to the present, Graham Robb has distilled a series of astonishing true narratives, all stranger than fiction. A young artillery lieutenant, strolling through the Palais-Royal, observes disapprovingly the courtesans plying their trade. A particular woman catches his eye; nature takes its course. Later that night, Napoleon Bonaparte writes a meticulous account of his first sexual encounter....
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Difficult....but worth it
- By Myrna Minkoff on 10-11-10
By: Graham Robb
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City of Light, City of Shadows
- Paris in the Belle Époque
- By: Mike Rapport
- Narrated by: Paul Daintry
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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From the wrought ironwork of the Eiffel Tower to the flourishing art nouveau movement, the Belle Époque is remembered as a golden age for Parisian culture. Beneath the veneer of elegance, however, fin de siècle Paris was a city at war with itself. In City of Light, City of Shadows, Mike Rapport uncovers a Paris riven by social anxieties and plagued by overlapping epidemics of poverty, political extremism, and anti-Semitism.
By: Mike Rapport
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Paris
- The Novel
- By: Edward Rutherfurd
- Narrated by: Jean Gilpin
- Length: 38 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Internationally best-selling author Edward Rutherfurd has enchanted millions of readers with his sweeping, multigenerational dramas that illuminate the great achievements and travails throughout history. In this breathtaking saga of love, war, art, and intrigue, Rutherfurd has set his sights on the most magnificent city in the world: Paris. Moving back and forth in time across centuries, the story unfolds through intimate and vivid tales of self-discovery, divided loyalties, passion, and long-kept secrets of characters both fictional and real, all set against the backdrop of the glorious city.
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Paris: The Novel (is that helpful?)
- By Mel on 05-07-13
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The Age of Insight
- The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present
- By: Eric R. Kandel
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 16 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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A brilliant book by Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel, The Age of Insight takes us to Vienna 1900, where leaders in science, medicine, and art began a revolution that changed forever how we think about the human mind - our conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions - and how mind and brain relate to art.
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Worth the listen
- By Amazon Customer on 01-28-19
By: Eric R. Kandel
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Van Gogh
- The Life
- By: Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 44 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Working with the full cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith have accessed a wealth of previously untapped materials. While drawing liberally from the artist's famously eloquent letters, they have also delved into hundreds of unpublished family correspondences, illuminating with poignancy the wanderings of Van Gogh's troubled, restless soul. Naifeh and Smith bring a crucial understanding to the larger-than-life mythology of this great artist.
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Empathy for a True Artist
- By Sojourning Hope on 05-04-21
By: Steven Naifeh, and others
What listeners say about Twilight of the Belle Epoque
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-09-24
2 volumes, great!
These 2 informative volumes were great preparation for our trip to the Olympics. Thank you.
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- SBG
- 02-22-23
Fun, immersive listen; but the narrator...
Yet another well-researched dive into a specific Parisian era; but I'm baffled by the narrator,
She's got an appealing voice and cadence and (unlike many) actually tackles the accents with some skill, but it seems like she is sight-reading and committing bizarre inconsistencies. Among the more egregious are Proust, to whom she refers as "Proo" and "Proust" -- even in the same paragraph. Other names are similarly butchered. I don't expect everybody to master every accent, but the weird thing here is that she actually does have a grasp of accents. She just drastically changes the pronunciation of recurring names for no reason whatsoever. PROO? Really? It's almost like she has no idea what is going on. Would it be too much to ask for a narrator who does a modicum of research? Are there no editors here? It just feels lazy -- and kind of strange. That said, I happily stuck with it, thanks to Mary McAuliffe. But come on, readers. Try doing just a minimum of homework.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Corrie Coldwell
- 02-10-25
Very disjointed storytelling but great historically.
I thought the storytelling was very disjointed so it was difficult to recall who was who when time periods and events changed. A great story of the time and culture but hard to keep up and understand the narrative of each “character’s” life and career progression.
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- Anonymous User
- 08-19-24
Hard on the ears
I couldn't finish this audiobook because it was painful on my ears when the narrator switched to French for certain words. it was jarring and annoying. I can think of many audiobook I enjoyed more, such as a recent book about JS Sargent, Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee, Caroline Weber's Proust Duchess, The Great Improvisation abiut Ben Franclin in France. I really can't stand the switch to French accent by this narrator.
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