The World of the Paris Café

From the back dust cover:

In The World of the Paris Café, W. Scott Haine investigates what the working-class café reveals about the formation of urban life in nineteenth-century France. Café society was not the product of a small elite of intellectuals and artists, he argues, but was instead the creation of a diverse and changing working population. Making unprecedented use of primary sources-from marriage contracts to police and bankruptcy records-Haine investigates the café in relation to work, family life, leisure, gender roles, and political activity. This rich and provocative study offers a bold reinterpretation of the social history of the working men and women of Paris.

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A Land Without Castles

From the Introduction:

The intent of this book is to examine the shifting image of America primarily through the perspective of the social and political institutions of France and England from the late eighteenth century up through the early portion of the nineteenth century. This study first looks at some of the older theoretical work on America, much of it the product of travel and scientific study of the culture, peoples, animals, and natural geography of the continent of North America. The literature on early European impressions of America is both rich and varied. This work examines some of the older views of America that worked their way early into the collective European psyche, only to be displaced by other ideas (and often other fictions) when it suited those nations and their literate classes to believe them. The image of America in the eyes of Europe and the evolution of that image in the eyes of a curious European population forms the core issue to be examined.

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