Mike Rosanova's Reviews > The Making of Paris: The Story of How Paris Evolved from a Fishing Village into the World's Most Beautiful City

Russell Kelley hosted a wonderful Zoom-based series on the Great Chateaux of the Loire and the Isle-de-France, a project of the Alliance Française groups in Chicago and Miami. Russell was remarkably well informed and totally congenial. His recent book, The Making of Paris, lived up to my expectations.
Russell says in his introduction that the book was inspired by the questions of visitors to his home in Paris, where he and his wife settled when he was a young American corporate lawyer. Russell has all the eye for detail that a successful corporate lawyer could be expected to have. Which is great. But I think that he sometimes focuses more on the details than on the romance and the emotional nuance and the political and social cabals that drove all those details to the surface and up the walls and down the boulevards of Paris.
I've spent more than forty years teaching both psychology and sociology, so for me the romance really is the story. I understand and applaud Russell's careful lawyerly distance from anything other than The Facts, Ma'am, Just the Facts.
But despite that, the romance does pop up, and that's what I really loved about Russell's book. I've never lived in Paris, but gosh wouldn't that be a wonderful thing to do!
By the way, a fine companion to Russell's book is Paris from the Underground Up by Lorant Deutsch, a historically savvy guide book which traces actual walking tours around Paris, Metro stop by Metro stop. You'll find copies on book shelves and in kiosks all over Paris, or if you're an armchair traveler like me, you can just get yourself a copy from your local bookstore.