Good Looks & Bad Manners: American Women Who Shook Up Paris, from the Belle Epoque to the New Wave

A narrative history of American women's love affair with Paris, from the Belle Epoque to the gritty and glamorous jazz age, through WWII and the cultural transformations beyond.

Starting in the late-19th century, the era of ocean liners and Impressionism, young American women followed their ambitions across the Atlantic to make a home in the irresistible city of Paris. Long before Emily in Paris, or even the advent of mass tourism, these plucky Americans fell in love with Paris and the freedoms it offered.

GOOD LOOKS AND BAD MANNERS, a deeply researched and character-driven cultural history, tells the story of seismic change—from the 1870s to the 1960s—and the American women whose creativity, boundary-pushing, and dauntless spirit shaped, and in turn were shaped by, the city of Paris.

Famous figures like Edith Wharton, Julia Child, and Angela Davis take their place among a riotous assembly of lesser-known artists and adventurers. The book invites us into the art scene of the 1870s, where Americans like Mary Cassatt and May Alcott (sister of Louisa) made a home for themselves outside the male-only Ecole de Beaux Arts, to the 1920s, where Isadora Duncan and Josephine Baker captivated audiences, to the hardships of WWII, shouldered by writers like Sylvia Beach and Gertrude Stein, and the ensuing cultural transformations beyond.

Often on their own for the first time, unsupervised by parents and rarely married, these women flaunted their talents and navigated limited budgets with thriftiness and good humor. Facing less (or at least different kinds of) sexism and racism than back home, the Americans cultivated a vibrant expat sisterhood—one that could withstand wars, epidemics, and financial crashes, as well as uplift extraordinary successes.

At its heart, this book is a love story, a celebration of a Paris both mythologized and realized by the daring American women who chose to call it home.