One of the great journalists of our time, Janet Flanner reported on European affairs for readers of The New Yorker from its first year of publication, in 1925. Her celebrated Letters from Paris, written under the pen name "Genet, " were gathered in several previous volumes. This collection brings together over seventy-five pieces that had never before been published in book form. It contains a prescient early profile of Hitler; accounts of the Nuremberg trials and postwar politics in Germany, Poland, and Italy; reviews of music, art, theatre, and films; and portraits of, among others, Thomas Mann, Alice B. Toklas, Bette Davis, Picasso.
The heart of Janet Flanner's world was Paris, where she lived for much of her life, but it was securely linked to her roots in America. She spent her last years in New York, where she died in 1978.