PARIS ON THE SEINE

Paris is a river town, Paris -- Sur -- Seine."" So the Introduction launches this Song of the River -- this tribute to the bridges and quais and the little streets that thread the banks. For here- in a walk along the Seine -- is Paris, its history, its legend, its ugliness and its beauty and its fascination. Through seven miles downstream and two thousand years of history, Paris, and through Paris- France- unfolds. It is not easy reading, for France's history was a troubled one, and a multiplicity of figures crowd its pages:- its kings and queens and princes, its statesmen and the architects of its fate, its villains and heroes, its Villon and Dumas and Voltaire, its Napoleon, the many facets of its cities within the city- and the famous and infamous buildings that hold its secrets. End paper maps, drawn specifically for this book, will be immensely helpful in tracing the steps of the journey, the bridges and key points. A chronology of France's checkered history -- if available elsewhere -- would help clarify the inevitable duplication as its rulers appear and reappear in varied guises. Superb photographs will give all who love Paris twinges of nostaliga- and it is to those readers that this book will chiefly appeal. To others, who know nothing of the city and little of its history, it will still hold glamour as a beautiful book.