Flanner writes with equal eloquence of Isadora Duncan's art, Stavisky's swindling, and the Munich accord. She registers the impact of Americans on Paris -- Lindbergh, Mae West, Hemingway -- and marks the passing of the great and near-great, from Ravel and La Goulue to Clemenceau and Mme. Curie. Some of her most riveting reports deal with crimes of passion. And she tells little-known facts about the chief executioner of France and the heartbreaking exodus from Spain into France during the Spanish Civil War.
In a sequence of dazzling vignettes and essays, Paris is captured in its golden hour.