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After risking the hazardous journey across the Atlantic, these Americans embarked on a greater journey in the City of Light. Most had never left home, never experienced a different culture. None had any guarantee of success. That they achieved so much for themselves and their country profoundly altered American history. As David McCullough writes, “Not all pioneers went west.” Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor in America, was one of this intrepid band. Another was Charles Sumner, who enrolled at the Sorbonne because of a burning desire to know more about everything. There he saw black students with the same ambition he had, and when he returned home, he would become the most powerful, unyielding voice for abolition in the U.S. Senate, almost at the cost of his life.
Two staunch friends, James Fenimore Cooper and Samuel F. B. Morse, worked unrelentingly every day in Paris, Cooper writing and Morse painting what would be his masterpiece. From something he saw in France, Morse would also bring home his momentous idea for the telegraph.
Pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk from New Orleans launched his spectacular career performing in Paris at age 15. George P. A. Healy, who had almost no money and little education, took the gamble of a lifetime and with no prospects whatsoever in Paris became one of the most celebrated portrait painters of the day. His subjects included Abraham Lincoln.
Medical student Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote home of his toil and the exhilaration in “being at the center of things” in what was then the medical capital of the world. From all they learned in Paris, Holmes and his fellow “medicals” were to exert lasting influence on the profession of medicine in the United States.
Writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Henry James were all “discovering” Paris, marveling at the treasures in the Louvre, or out with the Sunday throngs strolling the city’s boulevards and gardens. “At last I have come into a dreamland,” wrote Harriet Beecher Stowe, seeking escape from the notoriety Uncle Tom’s Cabin had brought her. Almost forgotten today, the heroic American ambassador Elihu Washburne bravely remained at his post through the Franco-Prussian War, the long Siege of Paris and even more atrocious nightmare of the Commune. His vivid account in his diary of the starvation and suffering endured by the people of Paris (drawn on here for the first time) is one readers will never forget. The genius of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the son of an immigrant shoemaker, and of painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, three of the greatest American artists ever, would flourish in Paris, inspired by the examples of brilliant French masters, and by Paris itself.
Nearly all of these Americans, whatever their troubles learning French, their spells of homesickness, and their suffering in the raw cold winters by the Seine, spent many of the happiest days and nights of their lives in Paris. McCullough tells this sweeping, fascinating story with power and intimacy, bringing us into the lives of remarkable men and women who, in Saint-Gaudens’s phrase, longed “to soar into the blue.” The Greater Journey is itself a masterpiece.
—Stacy Schiff, The New York Times Book Review
“An ambitious, wide-ranging study of how being in Paris helped spark generations of American genius. . . . A gorgeously rich, sparkling patchwork, eliciting stories from diaries and memoirs to create the human drama McCullough depicts so well.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A lively and entertaining panorama. . . . By the time he shows us the triumphant Exposition Universelle in 1889, witnessed through the eyes of such characters as painters John Singer Sargent and Robert Henri, we share McCullough's enthusiasm for the city and his affection for the many Americans who improved their lives, their talent and their nation by drinking at the fountain that was Paris.”
—Michael Sims, The Washington Post
"From a dazzling beginning that captures the thrill of arriving in Paris in 1830 to the dawn of the 20th century, McCullough chronicles the generations that came, saw and were conquered by Paris. . . . The Greater Journey will satisfy McCullough's legion of loyal fans . . . it will entice a whole new generation of Francophiles, armchair travelers and those Americans lucky enough to go to Paris before they die."
—Bruce Watson, The San Francisco Chronicle
"McCullough's skill as a storyteller is on full display. . . . The idea of telling the story of the French cultural contribution to America through the eyes of a generation of aspiring artists, writers and doctors is inspired. . . a compelling and largely untold story in American history."
—Kevin J. Hamilton, The Seattle Times
"There is not an uninteresting page here as one fascinating character after another is explored at a crucial stage of his development. . . . Wonderful, engaging writing full of delighting detail."
—John Barron, Chicago Sun-Times
“McCullough’s research is staggering to perceive, and the interpretation he lends to his material is impressive to behold. . . . Expect his latest book to ascend the best-seller lists and be given a place on the year-end best lists.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“A highly readable and entertaining travelogue of a special sort, an interdisciplinary treat from a tremendously popular Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. . . . Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“For more than 40 years, David McCullough has brought the past to life in books distinguished by vigorous storytelling and vivid characterizations. . . . . McCullough again finds a slighted subject in The Greater Journey, which chronicles the adventures of Americans in Paris. . . . Wonderfully atmospheric.”
—Wendy Smith, Los Angeles Times
“McCullough has hit the historical jackpot. . . . A colorful parade of educated, Victorian-era American travelers and their life-changing experiences in Paris.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
An ambitious, wide-ranging study of how being in Paris helped spark generations of American genius.
Not content to focus on a few of the 19th-century American artists, doctors and statesmen who benefited enormously from their Parisian education, award-winninghistorian McCullough (1776, 2005, etc.) embraces a cluster of aspiring young people such as portraitist George Healy and lawyer Charles Sumner, eager to expand their horizons in the 1830s by enduring the long sea passage, then spirals out to include numerous other visitors over an entire eventful century. In the early period of trans-Atlantic travel, American tourists were truly risking their lives over the weeks of rough sailing, but novelist James Fenimore Cooper, widowed schoolteacher Emma Hart Willard and young medical student Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. all knew their education was not complete without a stint in the medieval capital. For many of these American rubes, exposure to the fine arts, old-world architecture, fashion, fine dining, museums and teaching hospitals proved transformative, and the knowledge they gained would define their professional lives back in America. The year in Paris artist Samuel Morse painted his extraordinaryThe Gallery of the Louvrewould provide the climax of one careerand segue into another—as inventor of the electric telegraph. The revolutionary upheaval of 1848, the advent of the Second Empire and the massive redesign wrought by "demolition artist" Georges-Eugène Haussmann changed Paris profoundly, some said for the better, while the Americans continued to arrive: sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Congressman Elihu B. Washburne and painter Mary Cassatt, among many others. For some, like John Singer Sargent, who had been brought up traversing European capitals, their time spent in Paris would reveal what made them quintessentially American.
A gorgeously rich, sparkling patchwork, eliciting stories from diaries and memoirs to create the human drama McCullough depicts so well.
"Not all pioneers went west" -- with these charming, if misleading words, David McCullough launches his long, fascinating account of American residents in Paris in the nineteenth century.
They were not pioneers, of course, in the usual sense. There were no covered wagons, no endless plains and empty prairies, no hostile natives (except for the occasional glowering concierge). Instead, McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Truman and John Adams, has given a new twist to the idea of blazing a trail and has taken for his subject a version of that oldest and richest of literary dramas, as ancient at least as Homer and Odysseus: Someone Goes on a Great Journey. And he has given it a distinctively American form -- The New World Meets the Old.
His cast of characters is refreshingly original. He skips right past those first celebrated American expatriates in the City of Light, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, and begins his story in the 1830s, with a wave of young New Englanders who, over the course of the decade, cast off from Boston in two-masted sailing ships and made the dangerous, arduous month-long voyage to Le Havre. From there they rumbled off in enormous fifteen-passenger stagecoaches called diligences for the twenty-four hour bone-cracking trip to Paris, usually stopping at Rouen to stretch their legs and view for the first time the astonishing beauty of a medieval Catholic cathedral.
Some fifty years earlier Abigail Adams had written a friend from Paris, with an audible snort of Puritan disapproval: "If you ask me what is the business of life here? I answer, pleasure." It was -- and still is, mercifully -- an accurate description of Parisian life, but McCullough's travelers, though not immune to pleasure, all came with deeply serious purposes. Roughly speaking, they were divided between artists and medical students, both groups drawn by the fact that what Paris offered in the way of resources and schooling could be duplicated nowhere else in the world, certainly not in the turbulent, rollicking cultural adolescence of Jacksonian America.
This first wave of Americans in Paris includes some familiar names -- Samuel F. B. Morse, who began his life as a painter before becoming "The Lightning Man," inventor of the telegraph; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., who would become dean of the Harvard Medical School and a founder of The Atlantic Monthly; Charles Sumner, later senator from Massachusetts and leading abolitionist. But there are less familiar pilgrims as well -- Holmes's friend Thomas Appleton, for example, author of the much-repeated quip, "Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris." Or Emma Willard, founder of the Troy (New York) Female Seminary, who frowned at the French tolerance for nude statues, but became a great opera-goer and student of ladies' fashions.
McCullough loads these pages with marvelous anecdotes and word pictures. We have Morse swaying at the top of a rickety scaffold as he copies paintings in the Louvre, observed and encouraged by none other than James Fenimore Cooper, a long-time Parisian. We follow his young Bostonians into a restaurant at the Palais Royal, where they goggle at the immense number of mirrors and at menus the size of newspapers. We watch over Sumner's shoulder as he recognizes, in a life-altering flash of insight, that the black students in his classroom at the Sorbonne are as able as the whites. McCullough has a keen eye for the memorable quotation -- Nathaniel Willis writes of the ballerina Marie Taglioni, "She swims in your eye like a curl of smoke." His long chapter on American medical students is particularly absorbing, as he traces their daily routines in the Latin Quarter's renowned École de Médecine. Though if we needed reminding of the primitive nature of nineteenth-century medicine, we have only to turn to his horrifying account of surgery in the school's amphitheatre, when as many as 600 students could practice operations at the same time. (The discarded limbs and body parts were fed to dogs kept in cages outside.)
But as the century wears on, as sailing ships and diligences are replaced by steamships and trains, McCullough's narrative grows more diffuse and less focused. There were perhaps fewer than a thousand Americans resident in Paris when his first wave arrives from New England in the 1830s. After the Civil War, travel is far easier and cheaper and their numbers swell. By 1867 the number of American residents in Paris quadruples. His small band of "pioneers" becomes a parade of tourists and famous names -- Hawthorne, Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, P. T. Barnum -- all of them drawn to Paris like moths to a candle, but none of them united in purpose (or age) as the earlier band had been. For pages at a time Paris seems a background rather than a theme.
Then, in two superb chapters on the now obscure American ambassador Elihu Washburne, McCullough regains his momentum. Using a long-forgotten diary from Washburne's family papers, he reconstructs in thrilling detail the ambassador's heroic behavior during the Prussian Siege of Paris in 1870 and the bloodcurdling days of the Commune that followed. It is a wonderful fusion of character description and historical research. And from this point on, McCullough concentrates in satisfying and often moving detail on the careers of three great American artists who find their inspiration and release in the great Capital of Art: the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and the painters John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt.
There are a few small errors of fact (Washburne, for example, was not present when Grant met Lee at Appomattox) and some readers may wonder why Emerson, who had a visionary transcendentalist moment in the Jardin des Plantes, is not given more space, or why no use is made of Peter Brooks's recent brilliant book Henry James Goes to Paris. But these would be quibbles. On the great central thing, the indefinable power of Paris to awaken a sense of beauty, he is exactly right. He quotes Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose love of Paris grew in part from her feeling that American life had cheated her: "With all New England's earnestness and practical efficiency, there is a long withering of the soul's more ethereal part -- a crushing out of the beautiful -- which is horrible."
But David McCullough, though he also lives in New England, has clearly suffered no such crushing of the soul's ethereal part. He is seventy-eight years old, yet his book reads like a young man's book -- full of enthusiasm, fresh pleasure, delight in the world, and delight especially in the great luminous city that seems as he writes to lie open before him like a poem.
--Max Byrd
Mr. McCullough’s most recent book, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, the #1 New York Times bestseller, has been called “dazzling,” “an epic of ideas…history to be savored.” His previous work, 1776, has been acclaimed “a classic,” while John Adams, published in 2001, remains one of the most praised and widely read American biographies of all time. More than three million copies are in print and it is presently in its eighty-second printing.
In the words of the citation accompanying his honorary degree from Yale, “As an historian, he paints with words, giving us pictures of the American people that live, breathe, and above all, confront the fundamental issues of courage, achievement, and moral character.”
Mr. McCullough’s other books include The Johnstown Flood, The Great Bridge, The Path between the Seas, Mornings on Horseback, Brave Companions, and Truman. His work has been published in ten languages and, in all, more than 9,500,000 copies are in print. As may be said of few writers, none of his books has ever been out of print.
Mr. McCullough is also twice winner of the prestigious Francis Parkman Prize, and for his work overall, he has been honored by the National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award and the National Humanities Medal. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received forty-seven honorary degrees.
In a crowded, productive career, he has been an editor, essayist, teacher, lecturer, and familiar presence on public television—as host of Smithsonian World, The American Experience, and narrator of numerous documentaries, including Ken Burns’s The Civil War. His is also the narrator’s voice in the movie Seabiscuit.
John Adams, the seven-part mini-series on HBO, produced by Tom Hanks and starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, was one of the most acclaimed and talked about television events of recent years.
A gifted speaker, Mr. McCullough has lectured in all parts of the country and abroad, as well as at the White House. He is also one of the few private citizens to speak before a joint session of Congress.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1933, Mr. McCullough was educated there and at Yale, where he graduated with honors in English literature. He is an avid reader and traveler, and has enjoyed a lifelong interest in art and architecture. He is a devoted painter as well. Mr. McCullough and his wife, Rosalee Barnes McCullough, have five children and eighteen grandchildren.
McCullough, who majored in English literature at Yale, began his career as a magazine writer, but turned to history after reading some uninspired accounts of the disastrous 1899 flood of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He wrote his own history of the flood and its aftermath, and went on to chronicle two great feats of engineering: the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the creation of the Panama Canal.
Both The Great Bridge and The Path Between the Seas were bestsellers, and the latter won a National Book Award. Critics praised McCullough for his vivid descriptions and lively excerpts of firsthand accounts. The Great Bridge, wrote Robert Kirsch in The Los Angeles Times, is "a book so compelling and complete as to be a literary monument, one of the best books I have read in years." McCullough then progressed from the Panama Canal to its great proponent Theodore Roosevelt, the subject of his first biography. Mornings on Horseback, about the young Teddy Roosevelt, was hailed as a "masterpiece" by Newsday 's John A. Gable and praised as "a beautifully told story, filled with fresh detail" by The New York Times Book Review.
McCullough spent the next ten years researching and writing about Harry Truman, and the resulting book was a complex, compelling and affectionate portrait of America's 33d president. Truman won the Pulitzer Prize for biography and sold well over 1 million copies. Another Pulitzer Prize was awarded to McCullough's next book, John Adams, also a bestseller.
"McCullough's appreciation for Adams, like his appreciation for Truman, depends on an adherence to certain old-fashioned moral guidelines, which is to say on strength of character," wrote New York Times reviewer Pauline Maier. McCullough is eloquent about his subjects' honesty, unpretentiousness and deep sense of civic duty, though critics have sometimes charged that he is too quick to excuse or pass over their failings. But McCullough has his own reservations about "a certain school of historians who don't just want to prove somebody from the past had feet of clay, they want to show he's nothing but clay."
McCullough can admire his subjects in spite of their faults; as he once said, "The more we see the founders as humans the more we can understand them." Through his books, millions of readers have found American heroes whose human characters are as well worth studying as their historic accomplishments.
In addition to his work as a writer, McCullough has hosted the public television shows Smithsonian World and The American Experience, and narrated Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War.
Part I
1 The Way Over 3
2 Voilà Paris! 25
3 Morse at the Louvre 61
4 The Medicals 103
Part II
5 American Sensations 139
6 Change at Hand 179
7 A City Transformed 201
8 Bound to Succeed 239
Part III
9 Under Siege 267
10 Madness 303
11 Paris Again 331
12 The Farragut 357
13 Genius in Abundance 387
14 Au Revoir, Paris! 423
Epilogue 453
Acknowledgments 457
Source Notes 461
Bibliography 519
Index 539
Illustration Credits and Text Permissions 559
Eskypades
Posted May 23, 2011
Ever since I picked up "John Adams", I have been an avid fan of David McCullough. His biography of Harry Truman is perhaps the best one I've ever read. McCullough has a knack for taking people or things that perhaps have escaped the popular limelight (such as the Panama Canal or the Brooklyn Bridge) and writes a completely captivating history of them. You do not simply read a McCullough book, you experience it. When I first heard that McCullough was penning a new work focusing on the impact that Parisian life had on Americans of the 19th century, I was quite excited to say the least. And when I was offered the chance to do a pre-release review of The Greater Journey, I was thrilled and jumped at the opportunity. McCullough did not disappoint. "The Greater Journey" varies in focus from his other works. While the majority of his previous books have focused on political and engineering aspects of American history, "The Greater Journey" instead highlights many of the artistic influences of American history (Adams, Jefferson and Franklin get barely a mention). Although working with a large cast of characters such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mary Cassatt, Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Harriet Beecher Stowe, McCullough spotlights a few in more detail. Although Samuel F. B. Morse is more widely known for inventing the telegraph, McCullough spends more time discussing Morse's artistic work in the Louvre. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, sculptor of such memorials as the Farragut, Sherman and Robert Gould Shaw Memorials, was greatly influenced by his time in Paris. Of particular interest to me was the account of Elihu Washburne's efforts during the Franco-Prussian War to protect French, American and German citizens. With each of these and others, McCullough writes of how their time in Paris influenced their artistic abilities or, as was the case with Charles Sumner, their political/humanitarian views. When I first heard of the subject matter of the book, I wasn't sure it would be as interesting as McCullough's other works that dealt with more sweeping changes such as 1776. But while watching an interview of McCullough about the book, he made a statement that convinced me otherwise. He said "History is much more than just politics and generals. History is about life. History is human. And music, art, literature, poetry, theatre, science, the whole realm of the human spirit is all part of history." As captivating and readable as his other books, "The Greater Journey" offers a unique glimpse of the more cultural side of American history and the huge role Paris life played in shaping this culture. (5/5 stars)
108 out of 111 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 20, 2011
I thought this book was intriguing. I have always enjoyed well researched historical books and McCullough is a master. This period of history has always held a particular fascination for me, especially in the wonderful "city of light". His approach was insightful, and held my attention from the beginning. Reviews concerning price should be forwarded to the customer service or complaint dept. not here, where you are only speaking to empty air.
71 out of 81 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 2, 2011
I Also Recommend:
THE GREATER JOURNEY is WONDERFUL! Set in the 1800's, the transformation of Paris and the Americans who lived there and influenced music, art, literature, poetry, science, and acting. This book is an exciting, clever and intriguing glimpse into the more cultural side of American history and the meaningful role Paris life played in shaping our culture. The unequalled cultural delights that was Paris with its spectacular boulevards, and mystifying parks which decades later shaped New York City's Parks, energizes the essence of human spirit. Riveting! McCullough captured the essence of Paris in this unforgettable masterpiece!
27 out of 28 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Worth EVERY penny! A real page turner filled with incredible history that lets your imagination go wild
26 out of 32 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 12, 2011
This book opened my eyes to a period in history that was heretofore missing regarding Paris. Until David McCullough described the myriad of Americans that furthered their skills as Doctors, Artists, artisans and statesman, I was ignorant of what Paris meant to so many Americans.
As he has done in his many Historical novels, his research and ability to express himself, manifests his genius
Jack Vax
Mt Pleasant, SC
9 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 9, 2011
Amazing and thought-provoking book! Kudos to Mr. McCullough!!!
Shame on all of you cheap people who gave this amazing book a one star because the price of the nook was high. That has NOTHING to do with this book and it's review. WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!!
For those intelligent people who know how to appreciate a great read and know the value of their dollar will never be disappointed with this buy.
9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 12, 2011
This is a must-read for history buffs. It is apparently constructed from the various letters and writings of the numerous Americans who traveled to Paris in the early 19th century (many of whom I did not know made that journey). It offers a great insight on their perspective of France, and their comparative perspective of the U.S. in the early 1800s. Their comparative views - France vs. U.S. - can offer a certain peace of mind to those who might fear that our culture has undergone radical changes that frighten them.
It's very well-written, in a reasonable vocabulary, yet does not lack for description. It's not stilted, or conspicuously prejudiced - it's just a fascinating revelation of fact gleaned from real writings of real people.
I bought the hardback. Ebook prices are obscene. When I bought my Nook, just a few months back, prices were almost half of what they are now. I've put the Nook away now, because the convenience of an Ebook reader is too costly. It makes no sense to pay the same price for a poorly edited electronic copy, when you can own the carefully edited hardback.
But this review is about the book, not the Ebook price, and it's a 5-star read, for me.
7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 11, 2011
Another gem by one of our best writers.
7 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 10, 2011
Why do people who are interested in reading via NOOK give ANY book one star because of the cost of the e-book? The opportunity to "Rate & Review" books means that the readers are rating the content of the book NOT the price. To readers who want to purchase e-books and find the prices too high, which they are, find a more appropriate forum to express your opinions. Maybe if you go directly to Barnes and Noble customer service, your voices will be heard and the high prices of the e-books will come down.
As for this book, I loved it. David McCullough NEVER disappoints. The book contains so much history that I never knew----a fascinating story.
5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 10, 2011
The+retail+price+for+the+book+is+37.50%2C+%2410+more+than+the+average+hardcover.+It+has+numerous+photographs.+Ebook+is+%245+more+on+average+compared+to+other+new+ebooks.+It+makes+sense.+Stop+complaining.
5 out of 16 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 16, 2011
Seriously ... Nook folks, get off this page!! I've been anxious to pick this up and when I saw it was rated only three stars my heart sunk and I thought "how could it be? David McCullough is so fabulous ... how could he have failed with this amazing group of people?" But then I realized, the Nooks have muddied the reviews ... get off, get off, get off! I want an honest review - not your bloody whining about the price!!!!! Heading to B&N tomorrow for my hardcopy - not sure I'll ever join the ranks of Nook!
4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 6, 2011
I don't know when I have enjoyed a book of non-fiction more! The breadth and depth of David McCullough's erudition in The Greater Journey is, unlike so much writing about history, completely charming and engaging. He must have known that many of us would wish to revisit Paris after reading this; he kindly indicates when the names and numbers of addresses have changed in the course of Paris's history since mid-19th century! The book is very well organized so that in spite of a dizzying array of persons and events, one never feels lost or confused. The nook version includes the illustrative plates which show up vividly on my color nook. Though I'm ready to book my ticket, the irony is that McCollouch did not need to go to Paris to write his book. The letters and diaries of his Americans in Paris are almost all in American libraries. Quelle domage!
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 23, 2011
Seriously...
4 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted August 18, 2011
So please stop spamming with repetitive whines about the price. Get over it. Move on. (And rating a wonderfull book one star because of your issues with its price rather than its substance as a writtrn work is truely outrageous. Shame on all of you who did so.)
4 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 26, 2011
I have read most of the author's other works and thoroughly enjoyed the, especially his biography of John Adams. When The Greater Journey first came out it did not sound too interesting to me based on the subject matter and I held off for a while. I ended up picking it up a couple weeks ago and have loved it. The book is so well written it is a pleasure to read even though the subject matter would not have been my fist choice. I would highly recommend the book to any reader, even if they normally do not read non-fiction/history. I bought the hard cover and the book itself is lovely. The front and back contain great black and white photos of Paris from the time period covered in the book. Additionally the pages themselves are thick and heavy which is something you don't see a lot of these days. On a side note, it is disappointing to see all the negative reviews offered by those who don't like the NOOK price. While I tend to agree with them to a point, it is unfair to the author to rate the content of his work based a price set by the publisher and/or Barnes and Noble.
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted September 17, 2011
If you thrive on beautiful things art music theater and knowledge you will not be able to put this book down
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 23, 2011
The book, which I bought in hard back, is wonderful. I refused to buy it for the Nook (which I also own and enjoy) for two reasons. The first was cost. I agree with the other reviewers who term it highway robbery that the electronic version costs almost as much as the hard back version. Costco is selling the hard back version this week for $20.00, by the way. I'm headed over there to buy one for my friend's birthday.
Second, the "real" book has some great photos in it. They just don't translate as well to the Nook.
Wake up B&N. I love your stores AND the Nook but this is ridiculous. If Costco can sell the book for $20.00, I'm sure you can amend your cost for the electronic version too. Sign me A Loyal Fan who is also The Loyal Opposition.
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted May 21, 2012
This is an exceptionally engaging and enlightening book. David McCullough has probably created an American classic about a very critical piece of our history. If we only knew how much we owe France, over 100 years ago and perhaps further into the 21st century. After reading the original hardcover version last summer, the paperback version will now be my mini-backpack companion though the parks this summer. I hope it becomes an HBO docudrama, and a standard selection in U.S. high schools and colleges.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 27, 2011
This book is not light reading, particularly the section about the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune. My interests include history, art, and France, and I learned something about each of these things through this book. McCullough does an excellent job of presenting the savagery which stains French history as well as reinforcing our image of Paris as an icon of culture and delicacy.
2 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 9, 2011
Great insight about some of our famous artists! Makes me want to go to Paris more! Written like his other books, you have to love history!
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Overview
The Greater Journey is the enthralling, inspiring—and until now, untold—story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, politicians, architects, and others of high aspiration who set off for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900, ambitious to excel in their work.
After risking the hazardous journey across the Atlantic, these Americans embarked on a greater journey in the City of Light. Most had never left home, never experienced a different culture. None had any...