Features hero and narrator Gabriel, who loves two sisters, Ann and Clara, as he wanders amid many plots and subplots

Love and Empire

Literature & Fiction

Orsenna, Érik

Contemporary

Harpercollins

Gabriel, our resilient and bouncy hero, has two fixations: one for rubber, in pursuit of which he sets a trail across a dwindling empire; the other for two English sisters for whom he develops an abiding passion.

Vintage, U.K.

Andre Le Notre, chief landscape gardener at Versailles, enjoyed a thirty-five-year relationship with his patron, Louis XIV, the Sun-King. Born in Paris, grandson and son of gardeners, he grew up in the Tuileries and amid the flourishing of the decorative artssculpture, gardening, painting, architecturein the nearby workshops of the Louvre. This book recounts his life and achievements in a distillation of facts and musings. Le Notre was recognized as a genius in his time, particularly in his innovative use of perspective and reflective water surfaces. His services were sought by the rich and powerful, and he was responsible for an "archipelago" of gardens surrounding Paris, including Fontainebleau, Marly, and Chantilly. This book focuses on Versailles and the unlikely association of "the most powerful of monarchs, to whose will everything must bend" and a master gardener who never for a moment claimed to be anything else. The search for happiness is a recurring theme, implicit in the title and in remarks such as "any walk [in Versailles park] is a peaceful pursuit of happiness." If happiness comes from fulfilling one's potential, Le Notre was a happy man in his calling to give pleasure to others. He created an enduring legacy in a fragile medium.

André Le Notre: Gardener to the Sun king

Arts & Photography

George Braziller, Inc.

In the spirit of The Little Prince, this enchanting fantasy about the adventures of a shipwrecked brother and sister is a book for young people best appreciated by grown-ups. At the heart of its message is an impassioned plea for the magic and power of words. Jeanne, the tough-minded ten-year-old narrator, and Thomas, fourteen, are traveling to America on an ocean liner to visit their mother when a violent storm sinks their ship and tosses them up on an island. They are unhurt, but the shock of the experience leaves them without the ability to speak. Taken into the care of Monsieur Henri, an elderly islander, Jeanne and Thomas discover that the island is unlike any place they've ever been. There is the Word Market, where Monsieur Henri visits the Poets' and Song-Writers' Corner to see if they have any rhymes for sweet and mom. At town hall, pairs of words are married by the mayor. And Jeanne sneaks off to the Vocabulary of Love Shop, where a woman whose husband has left her wants to buy "a word that will make him understand how hurt I am, a mighty word that will make him ashamed." A celebration of language in all its forms, Grammar Is a Sweet, Gentle Song will delight confirmed word-lovers and inspire the uninitiated with the pleasures of the spoken and written word.

Grammar Is a Sweet, Gentle Song: A Novel

One hundred landscape photographs from the great painter and photographer are collected here, featuring scenes from all over the world. 10,000 first printing.

Henri Cartier-Bresson: City and Landscapes

CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri

Individual Artists

Bulfinch

A variation in nine movements on the guitar through the ages, from ancient Egypt to Jimi Hendrix, with Eric Clapton as the guide...An elegant, solemn tale.--Le Monde

History of the World in Nine Guitars

Genre Fiction

Welcome Rain Publishers

Passion and concern for the Gulf Stream motivated Erik Orsenna to travel far and wide to meet scholars and scientists who hold the key to the mysteries of this powerful ocean current. Spanning thousands of years of history, this book weaves between poetry and science to trace the influence of currents on our climate and culture.

Portrait of the Gulf Stream: In Praise of Currents (Armchair Traveller)

Science & Math

Nature & Ecology

Haus Publishing

The long tern future of the Gulf Stream is now under threat; the Arctic ice is melting and the fear among oceanographers is that the cold water will not sink in the Norwegian Sea, thus switching off this transatlantic heat conveyer. Northern Europe would then freeze, and this apparent paradox - that global warming could bring about a new european ice age - seems to have caught the popular imagination. Orsenna explores the Gulf Stream, its past and its future, both in celebration and in lament of its possible demise.

A Portrait of the Gulf Stream: In Praise of Currents (Armchair Traveller)

The Columbus brothers worked relentlessly for eight years to prepare the voyage Christopher dreamed of: the search for the passage to the Indies, Cipango and the Empire of the Great Khan. Bartolomeo tells the story from the very outset; he is his brother's accomplice and the main witness to the events leading to the Indies Enterprise.

The Indies Enterprise

Literary

555pages. in8. Broché.  L'EXPOSITION COLONIALE. Je m'appelle Gabriel. Je suis né en 1883 à Levallois, capitale des chevaux. Louis était mon père, très gourmand de mariages. Moi, depuis plus d'un demi-siècle, j'aime deux soeurs: Clara, la longue, photographe de shtetls, et Ann, la blonde, une femme d'affaires qui ne se donne que debout. Grâce à elles, ma vie aura ressemblé à une exposition coloniale: un faux empire, des rêves trop grands, un spectacle pour les familles.... Grâce à elles, j'aurai connu l'Amazonie, Belem do Para, le positivisme, le port de Londres, la course automobile, la vie secrète de Clermont-Ferrand, les belles amies de Freud, le visage hideux du Vélodrome d'hiver, la vieille Hué, capitale des tombeaux... Et tant d'autres curiosités. Ann et Clara m'auront appris des vérités insoupçonnées, par exemple que le caoutchouc ressemble à la démocratie, il évite les guerres civiles entre les choses, que sans les bicyclettes jamais nous n'aurions perdu Dien Bien Phu, ou que les chagrins d'amour sont plus doux dans la jungle....

L'Exposition coloniale

SEUIL

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Books by Orsenna, Érik

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Orsenna, Érik. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Love and Empire

Love and Empire

André Le Notre: Gardener to the Sun king

Grammar Is a Sweet, Gentle Song: A Novel

Henri Cartier-Bresson: City and Landscapes

History of the World in Nine Guitars

Portrait of the Gulf Stream: In Praise of Currents (Armchair Traveller)

A Portrait of the Gulf Stream: In Praise of Currents (Armchair Traveller)

The Indies Enterprise

L'Exposition coloniale