<p>France between the wars saw a dynamic mix of larger-than-life personalities and unconventional ideas, audacity and genius, elegance and edge. Artists, musicians, writers, dancers, composers, the American, French, and other European characters who comprised the "Lost Generation" were all there: Hemingway, Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Stravinsky, Picasso, Cocteau, Man Ray, Léger, Balanchine, Diaghilev, Fitzgerald. This riveting portrait re-creates the glamour, excitement, and intellectual fervor of Jazz Age France, drawing on fresh, never-before-seen material. A special feature is a chapter on the little-known generation of African-American artists who left Harlem to work in France.<br><br>Writing in a vivid style that transports the reader back to that vibrant time, Charles Riley presents a panorama of the arts scene in Paris and the Riviera in the 1920s, providing fascinating insights based on letters, diaries, journals, and private archives as well as art. Highlights include never-published paintings by Picasso and Léger; previously unknown works by e. e. cummings and John Dos Passos; and intimate photographs of the era from family albums belonging to this circle of friends, who were among the world's great artists and writers.<P>Author Bio: Charles A. Riley II, professor of English at Baruch College of the City University of New York, is the author of several books on aesthetics and art, including two Abrams titles: <I>The Art of Peter Max</I> and <I>Ben Schonzeit: Paintings</I>. He lives in New York City.</p> <h3>The New York Times - Nicholas Fox Weber</h3> <p>In <i>The Jazz Age in France</i>, Charles A. Riley II focuses on the insouciance and elan, as well as the serious achievement, of some of the people whose high jinks and true genius defined the brilliance of the 1920's. In its breezy but informative text and feast of lively illustrations, the book sketches the overlapping lives of rich patrons and dedicated writers, composers, performers and painters who convened in Paris and on the Cote d'Azur in this epoch of flourishing creativity. <p> Riley, who teaches English at Baruch College, captures both the panache and the tragic reality of his cast of characters. For all the glamour of the jauntily dressed Fitzgeralds, of Picasso and his mistresses frolicking on the beach and American poets cavorting in dreamy open-topped motorcars, nothing was quite enough. The quest, more than the end product, possessed them, and they never achieved their unattainable goals. </p>
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