Why read The World of the Paris Café?

Book cover of The World of the Paris Café: Sociability Among the French Working Class, 1789-1914

Book description

"[Haine] invites the reader of The World of the Paris Cafe to step up to the serving counter of a nineteenth-century Parisian cafe to eavesdrop on the conversations and to observe the dynamics of this unique working-class establishment ...These cafes were far more than places to eat and drink to…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The World of the Paris Café as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Brian Cowan

Author

Haine provides his readers with a solid social history of the French café in the long nineteenth century. While coffee was introduced to France earlier in the seventeenth century and cafés became a notable aspect of the social scene in Enlightenment Paris, it is only after the French Revolution that the café became a crucial place for working-class people to gather, socialize, and to drink (alcohol more often than coffee, as it happened) together. This is the book to turn to when you want to know how many cafés could be found in Balzac’s Paris, who got arrested for what…

From Brian's list on The best books on the history of coffee and coffeehouses.