Becoming Americans in Paris: Transatlantic Politics and Culture between the World Wars

by Brooke L. Blower

Americans often look back on Paris between the world wars as a charming escape from the enduring inequalities and reactionary politics of the United States. In this bold and original study, Brooke Blower shows that nothing could be further from the truth. She reveals the breadth of American activities in the capital, the lessons visitors drew from their stay, and the passionate responses they elicited from others. For many sojourners-not just for the most famous expatriate artists and writers- Paris served as an important crossroads, a place where Americans reimagined their position in the world and grappled with what it meant to be American in the new century, even as they came up against conflicting interpretations of American power by others. Interwar Paris may have been a capital of the arts, notorious for its pleasures, but it was also smoldering with radical and reactionary plots, suffused with noise, filth, and chaos, teeming with immigrants and refugees, communist rioters, fascism admirers, overzealous police, and obnoxious tourists. Sketching Americans' place in this evocative landscape, Blower shows how arrivals were drawn into the capital's battles, both wittingly and unwittingly. Americans in Paris found themselves on the front lines of an emerging culture of political engagements-a transatlantic matrix of causes and connections, which encompassed debates about "Americanization" and "anti-American" protests during the Sacco-Vanzetti affair as well as a host of other international incidents. Blower carefully depicts how these controversies and a backdrop of polarized European politics honed Americans' political stances and sense of national distinctiveness. A model of urban, transnational history, Becoming Americans in Paris offers a nuanced portrait of how Americans helped to shape the cultural politics of interwar Paris, and, at the same time, how Paris helped to shape modern American political culture.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

370 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 20, 2010

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book #3 in our "Reading the 20th Century" quest.

[fwarg · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book suffers from lofty expectations and poor chapter structuring. Arguments are drawn out and reiterated because it tries to be too much: offering moments of walking tours of Paris, historical, political, and literary theory. It needed to narrow its focus it houses far too many arguments in the citations of others while not offering enough concrete examples. I must reiterate it really suffers from disorganization on a page by page level.

[Lulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scholarly read well worth your time if you're interested in a take on Americans in Paris in the interwar period different from the life's-a-party devil-may-care stories that we normally hear.

[Itinerant · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a travel book, this isn't good reading. But the academic material feels touristy. I think the author went to France, was a student, and wanted to write a book. This is it.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trekking beyond the well-trod historical path, peppered with stories of “The Lost Generation” in “Gay Paree,” Blower re-reads archival evidence to analyze how Americans in Paris between the world wars not only participated in the American cultural and economic expansion that others, such as Emily Rosenberg in Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945 have chronicled, but were involved in a two-way exchange that shaped what it meant to be American – ideologically, culturally, artistically, and politically.

Blower argues that this formative experience took place as much – if not more so – on foreign soil than back in the states, and dramatically influenced the international politics of the expatriate community and the US more broadly.

While she draws heavily from the works and correspondence of writers, such as Ernest Hemingway, e.e. cummings, John Dos Passos, William Shirer, Langston Hughes, and Martha Gellhorn – as well as the experiences of expat personalities like Josephine Baker – Blower focuses most pointedly on political moments, discussing how the 1927 political upheaval caused by the Sacco-Vanzetti affair and the meeting of the American Legion in Paris were events that defined America, Americans, Americanism, Americanization (or coca colonization) and anti-American sentiment – all within an international context.

While perhaps lacking a more sturdy theoretical foundation to stand upon, and at times guilty of romanticizing Paris despite a theoretical imperative to do otherwise, Blower tells an illuminating transnational history of Americans and Paris with prose that is as elegant as it accessible - and (on a much less academic note) that is contained beneath a truly gorgeous book cover design.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a serious, densely packed book with a great deal of information about, and analysis of, the cultural and political interactions of Americans in Paris between the wars. It was not a light read, but I read it cover to cover over a couple of months. If you're looking for "Midnight in Paris," this isn't it!--although many of the same expat characters appear in both. What it is, is a well-reasoned exploration of America coming of age after World War I and defining what it would be in relation to Europe. It talks about how various groups of Americans related to Paris, and how the Parisians related to them--and why. I think it provides an invaluable foundation for anyone really interested in the evolution of Paris and the Americans attracted to it over time.

[Nari · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is definitely not a bit of light reading, in case you are wondering. Although it is densely packed with information, Brooke Blower's writing style makes it easy and entertaining to get through. As to her theme of the book, it really felt like a long catalog of reason of why Americans are hated in Europe. It seems like many of the reasons still resonate today. In generalized words, Americans are pompous, loud, demanding and unsympathetic to the way of life in the country they are visiting. It seems that the French absolutely hated the American presence in Paris.

more at: www.thenovelworld.com

[Meade · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am surprised that Oxford printed this. I am somewhat shocked that it was apparently (per author bio) sanctioned by Princeton as a doctoral thesis. It should be listed as a travel book with footnotes. It's closer to "Midnight in Paris" than to "Discovery of France" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Discovery-F...) which is in the same discipline - and a fantastic book. If it's a historical/political book, why does the author romance the topic? If it's cultural criticism, why doesn't the book analyze culture? If it's sociology, why is there no discussion of how social grouping (i.e., of "Americans in Paris")? Strange.