Laurence Mackinreviews Panther Soup: A European Journey in War and Peace and the latest edition of The Rough Guide to Paris
Panther Soup: A European Journey in War and Peace
John Gimlette
Hutchinson, £18.99 in UK
John Gimlette undertakes an extraordinary odyssey in this book.
He traces the route of the American invasion of Europe towards the end of the second World War, from the sordid streets of Marseilles, in southern France, to the Austrian Tyrol.
For company he has Putnam Flint, a tank-buster with the Panther division, who fought with 2.7 million other Americans in the rolling leviathan that smashed its way into the heart of the Reich.
The odd gun emplacement and German pillbox still hulk the landscape, but there is little trace of the immense battlefields and temporary rest points of the US advance.
This is an effectual account full of telling detail: the shattered landscape of Provence, whose beauty killed an artist; the rolling French meals, of which the author says "the French care only about quality, the Americans quantity, and the English table manners"; and the regional Alsace attitude that would seek to defy the combined might of Russia to the east, the US to the west and Germany at its heart.
The Rough Guide to Paris
James McConnachie and Ruth Blackmore
Rough Guides, £12.99 in UK
Ah, Paris: it's pricey, the people are rude and tourists are treated like dirt. Utter nonsense.
The charms of the French capital are well advertised, and this new edition works hard to flag the new as well as the old, making sure that the Louvre and the Left Bank get equal footing with cutting-edge exhibition spaces, new boutiques and markets to lose your weekend away in.
A fantastic slice of the finest French delicacy.