Book Review:
Walks Through Napoleon and Josephine's Paris

ISBN: 1892145251
Format: Hardcover, 137pp
Pub. Date: February 2004
Publisher: Little Bookroom
Edition Description: With Maps

By Norman Barth

Paris Kiosque - February 2004- Volume 11, Number 2
Copyright © 2004 Norman Barth - Used with permission.

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Elegant. That is one of the words that describes Diana Reid Haig's just published book "Walks Through Napoleon and Josephine's Paris." As you read it you will find numerous other apt words coming to mind, all of them positive.

The book traces those parts of the lives of Napoleon and Josephine that are still to be found on the streets and in the quartiers of present day Paris. Just outside of Paris, chapters for Fontainebleau and Château de Malmaison are also included. For the neophyte student of Paris, or Napoleon, the book is an introduction to the richness of both subjects, likely to inspire the curious to further discovery. For the more seasoned traveler and thinker the reaction is likely to be the same, but with the added excitement that they are learning something new about the place that thus far had been accessible to with more detailed study and work.

In many ways, history is nothing more than connecting "dots," and understanding why a particular set of dots are connected. For many this activity is a rather droll intellectual one with little connection to the present. Part of why we love Paris so much is that many of the "dots" which make up history are still to be found, are still present: perhaps in the building by which we are walking, perhaps in the restaurant in which we are eating, perhaps in the café, from which we are watching the world go by. "Walks Through Napoleon and Josephine's Paris" lays out before us not only many of these locations, but also provides the historical context for why these locations are significant. Taking a step back from the book's words themselves, the reader learns more about the history and geography which shapes France, both today, and in the period during which Napoleon lived.

As a gift for the sophisticated traveler or historian of French, or European history, you will not go wrong with "Walks Through Napoleon and Josephine's Paris." But this book will delight many more constituencies as well: the romantic, the tourist, and the food buff among them.

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Norman Barth is the editor of the Paris Kiosque, and webmaster/creator of Les Pages de Paris. He can be contacted at nbarth@paris.org