Parisians

Graham Robb traces Paris from the Revolution to the present through a collection of true episodes, many of them more surprising than any invented plot. The book moves among famous names, lesser-known figures and people history has nearly forgotten, showing how each shaped the city in turn.

The opening scenes are set in the Palais-Royal, where a young artillery officer named Napoleon notices the courtesans working among its arcades. One of them catches his attention, and the chapter follows the consequences of that evening, including the detailed private account he wrote afterward. Elsewhere, a fashionable woman fleeing the Louvre loses her way in the unmapped streets of the Left Bank, a detail that becomes part of the story of Marie-Antoinette's fate, since reliable maps of the city barely existed at the time.

The cast is wide. Baudelaire, the photographer Marville, Baron Haussmann, the woman who inspired the Mimi of La Bohème, Proust, Charles de Gaulle and Hitler's tour of the occupied capital with his generals all appear. Robb's settings run from the quarries and catacombs beneath the streets to the great monuments above them, and out to the suburbs that surround the city today.

Rather than a single chronological survey, the book builds a portrait of Paris from its people, places and private moments. It suits readers who enjoy history told through individual lives and who want to see the city's past from street level.