How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City

Joan DeJean (Get this book)
Illuminating portrait of the first modern city, 17th-century Paris, which could "hold a visitor's attention with quite different splendors." DeJean focuses on two kings, Henry IV and his grandson, Louis XIV, who lived 250 years before Baron Haussmann, the great public works leader who massively renovated Paris during the mid-1800s. "Paris caused urban planners to invent what a city should be," writes the author, "and it caused visitors to dream of what a city might be." Dejean obviously knows and loves Paris, and she provides coherent history that effectively explains the evolution of a city built by a few prescient men.--Kirkus