A recipe for success for a travel guide!

Ask writers, curators, museum directors, artists, photographers, filmmakers, and fashion designers… to share their haunts and favorite places in each city they know and love – and donate the royalty to a worthy cause. City Secrets Paris benefits Doctors without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), founded in France in 1971).

The City Secrets Series previously covered London, Rome, Florence and Venice and also New York City. Each book has its own charms but the overriding quality is the writing, full of personal and intimate insights and experiences, standing apart from the typical professional travel guide with its checklists of musts. It is good reading on its own even if you are not traveling; and many locals enjoy new discoveries as well.

For the Paris edition, I am happy to have contributed several pieces on newer museums or little known ones, even a walking-shopping tour of Saint-Germain-des-prés, to which Pierre Bergé, the founding partner of Yves Saint Laurent fashion house, also wrote  a loving tribute.  All of the places are my favorites and unique in some way. For example, the daring and original architecture of the  Musée du quai Branly in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Or the Musée de la Musique with its equally original programming and displays, which I wrote about in this post.  Also the little-known Fondation Le Corbusier in western Paris, in a house (Maison La Roche) built by the architect exemplifying his own design philosophy.

NEWS & UPDATES TO  FOLLOWING POSTS:

How Art Can Change Your Life – The Fine Art Of Art Viewing  (Posted 10/26/2014) 

11/9/2014    See here what Leo Tolstoy, Pablo Neruda and Oscar Wilde think  what art is. They are remarkably similar to what Lord Cecil described.

Uncertainty In Video Games – To Hate Is To Love  (Posted 8/3/2014) 

11/13/2014   Can Video Games Be Art, Be Ballet, or Be Science?  See here.