McAuliffe completes her chronicle of Paris–begun with Dawn of the Belle Epoque–with this volume, similar in scope and content to her initial offering. Paris serves as the essential backdrop for a year-by-year summary of the lives, loves, and achievements of the city's academic and cultural elite. The author has a keen eye for the telling, tantalizing, and occasionally titillating detail, and she has mined a host of solid secondary works as well as printed journals and memoirs to assemble this portrait. Casual readers will be astonished at the book's dramatis personae: not only Picasso, Stravinsky, Proust, Renault, the Curies, and Gertrude Stein––all name-dropped on the cover––but also Clemenceau, Rodin, Bernhardt, Duncan, Zola, Debussy, and Matisse. All told, an astonishing outpouring of artistic ability and achievement. Scholars will find a wealth of detail that brings to life the figures of tout Paris. Like its companion volume, this second 'gossipy soufflé' will charm all who love Paris, French history, and the arts. It would make a wonderful travel companion for those Paris bound, and a delightful read for all. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All 20th-century collections.

Choice Reviews

In Twilight of the Belle Epoque, this brilliant social historian applies her novelistic approach . . . to the early 20th century, interweaving a multitude of stories to create—through skillfully chosen glimpses into the lives of its most talented inhabitants—an unforgettable portrait of Paris. . . . Deftly, McAuliffe gathers together the threads of her multiple tales for the arrival of that ultimate rite: war. Here, to her readers’ possible surprise, the artists and inventors emerge as heroes. . . . Summary reduces the various elements of McAuliffe’s marvelous book to a mere cocktail of events. Harder to convey is the subtlety of the mix. With uncommon skill, she blends each ingredient of an incredible époque into a vivid and hugely enjoyable narrative of extraordinary times.

The New York Times

However tentative its beginning and disastrous its end, the Third Republic had its glories, as Mary McAuliffe reminds us in Twilight of the Belle Epoque. The years between 1870 and 1914 were a time when Paris could fairly claim to be the cultural capital of the world. This was the France of the Impressionists and post-Impressionists, of Rodin and the young Picasso, Matisse and Braque, the France of Proust and Gide, of Debussy and Ravel. Paris became the City of Light, the center of fashion. The cinema was born; the Métro was built. The Renault brothers and André Citroën created an automobile industry. Pierre and Marie Curie, discovering the properties of radium, prepared the way for advances that transformed the modern world.

In her panoramic chronicle, Ms. McAuliffe takes up all these topics, giving a year-by-year account of the second half of the era, just as she treated its first half in Dawn of the Belle Epoque (2011). Her strict chronological format creates a series of surprising juxtapositions: On one page, a young Charles de Gaulle marvels at a performance by Sarah Bernhardt ; on the next, Picasso walks around Paris wielding a gun passed down by the avant-garde troublemaker Alfred Jarry. This is a work of serious history, but has some of the easy charms of the coffee-table book and is full of gossip. (When Bernhardt's anti-Dreyfus son offends her during dinner, she angrily shatters a plate.) . . . All of Ms. McAuliffe's Belle Epoque moments, bright and foreboding, build to the horrors and glories of the war of 1914-18, in which France suffered losses of almost 1.5 million men, with some three million more wounded.

The Wall Street Journal

Fascinating trivia about artists in turn-of-the-century Paris adds layers of insight to a time of growth and experimentation...McAuliffe is uniquely positioned to bring this crowded cast of characters to life. She does a thorough job of cataloging the wide range of artistic and scientific achievements while managing to also offer surprising tidbits that add texture to the narrative...McAuliffe’s knowledge of and enthusiasm for this time is evident on every page.

Foreword Reviews

In her prior work, Dawn of the Belle Epoque (2011), historian McAuliffe recounted how Paris, reeling from the disasters of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, reemerged as the glittering cultural center of Europe in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. During the so-called Belle Epoque, art, literature, and science bloomed in a creative outburst, led by a cast of innovative geniuses, including Zola, Monet, Rodin, and Renoir. In her follow-up, McAuliffe covers the period from 1900 to 1914. The cast of characters as well as the political and social milieu have changed somewhat, but the cultural, scientific, and technological creativity continued to flourish. But as McAuliffe indicates, the epoch had its dark side, including the ongoing and increasingly vicious battles between monarchists and republicans, and Catholics versus secularists. The more prescient observers were haunted by the looming threat of a general European war. This is a fine tribute to an amazingly productive period in Parisian and world history.

Booklist

McAuliffe follows up her Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends with this book taking readers forward a few decades. It’s actually not so much a history of a time as a collection of biographies—over 30 of them—of early 20th-century French inventors, politicians, and artists. The author divides the book by year, with each chapter relating significant events in the life of the main subjects during that one year. . . . McAuliffe has an eye for the evocative, using quotes—and salacious details—to bring these early 20th-century men and women to life, several of whom—Rodin, Zola, the Curies—were covered in her previous book (she orients readers in case they did not read that volume). The author excels at including material about women throughout. VERDICT Recommended for readers who enjoyed the previous volume and for biography junkies.

Library Journal