<em>The Invention of Paris</em> is a tour through the streets and history of the French capital under the guidance of radical Parisian author and publisher Eric Hazan. <br /><br />Hazan reveals a city whose squares echo with the riots, rebellions and revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Combining the raconteur's ear for a story with a historian's command of the facts, he introduces an incomparable cast of characters: the literati, the philosophers and the artists—Balzac, Baudelaire, Blanqui, Flaubert, Hugo, Maney, and Proust, of course; but also Doisneau, Nerval and Rousseau. <br /><br />It is a Paris dyed a deep red in its convictions. It is haunted and vitalized by the history of the barricades, which Hazan retells in rich detail. <em>The Invention of Paris</em> opens a window on the forgotten byways of the capital's vibrant and bloody past, revealing the city in striking new colors.