Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 [Hardcover]

Jeffrey H. Jackson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 5, 2010

In the winter of 1910, the river that brought life to Paris—the Seine—became a force of destruction in a matter of hours.  Torrential rainfall saturated the soil, and faulty engineering created conditions that soon drowned Parisian streets, homes, businesses, and museums, thrusting the City of Light into a battle with the elements. Given the Parisians’ history of deep-seated social, religious, and political strife, many worried that they wouldn’t be able to collaborate to confront the crisis. Yet while the sewers, Métro, and electricity failed around them, Parisians of all backgrounds rallied to save the city and one another. Improvising techniques to keep Paris functioning and braving the dangers of collapsing infrastructure and looters, leaders and residents alike answered the call to action.

In breathtaking detail, Jeffrey Jackson captures here for the first time the epic story of the great flood. As the waters rise, so does the tension, but ultimately, the Parisians’ love of their city leads them to triumph over nature against all odds.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As the primary conduit for goods and people, the Seine helped turn Paris into a thriving commercial center. But the river also brought destruction and death through periodic winter flooding. Important efforts were made in the 19th century to regulate the river, but a key proposal to raise the level of the quay walls was botched. By the second week of 1910, water from rising rivers washed through and wreaked havoc on villages upriver from Paris. By January 22, Parisians were forced out of homes; the river and the warehouse district of Bercy was particularly devastated and with it the city's precious wine supply. Water from the Seine was carried by the Métro into other areas on the right bank, but Parisians rallied. They established wooden walkways while soldiers rescued people from the water and prevented looting without occupying the city. Enlivened by period photographs of a flooded Paris, this is a capable, well-researched history of a modern city's battle with nature, but Rhodes College history professor Jackson's attempts to make connections with recent events like Katrina or the suburban Paris riots are tepid. 17 b&w photos. (Jan.)
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Review

"A tight, concentrated tale of adversity and survival . . . Evenhanded, at once pragmatic and inspiring." -- Caroline Weber, The New York Times Book Review

 

"[This] riveting account of the great flood of 1910 and the city's benevolent response is fascinating and inspiring. . . . surprisingly gripping." --Minneapolis Star Tribune

"It’s hard to imagine a more thoroughly researched history of the Paris, France, flood of 1910 than Paris Under Water by Jeffrey H. Jackson.  With the national debate roaring on whether post-Katrina New Orleans should be rebuilt, Paris Under Wateroffers the definitive answer of yes.  A truly first-rate book." --Douglas Brinkley, author of The Great Deluge:Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Gulf Coast

"Jeffrey Jackson’s meticulous account of the great Paris flood is harrowing history told in gripping detail but also a stark warning as waters rise everywhere."--Mort Rosenblum, author of Secret Life of the Seine and Chocolate

"Paris Under Water is a riveting account of a natural catastrophe that struck Paris in 1910.  Going far beyond the boundaries of environmental or urban history, it draws on an exceptionally wide array of sources to offer the reader a meticulous, yet rich and personal, reconstruction of what the great flood felt like to contemporaries, what it revealed about social tensions and solidarities, and what it signified on a broader historical scale.  Jackson has succeeded masterfully in telling a fascinating story in a way that any reader will find utterly irresistible, while applying insightful and erudite scholarly analysis in a way that sheds light on a great city’s social, economic, and cultural life.  A tour de force of scholarship and brilliantly creative craftsmanship." --Michael D. Bess, author of Choices Under Fire:Moral Dimensions of World War II

"Before New Orleans, there was Paris.  The Great Paris Flood of 1910, which paralyzed the world’s most modern city and caused over a billion euros (by today’s standards) worth of damage, provides a fascinating study of physical and social devastation and human survival.  Jackson blends the vivid details of the flood--exploding sewer covers, disintegrating streets--with the wider historical context, from the Commune of 1871 to World War I, and the psychology of disaster.  Modernization itself contributed to Paris’s destruction.  But, as Jackson concludes, in the end Paris survived the flood because it was a functioning human community, not because it was a modern metropolis.  Any student of history or lover of Paris will want to read this book." --Sarah Smith, The Knowledge of Water, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year

"Fascinating work, important story, beautifully told. Jackson tells us about a little-known flood of a well-known city, Paris. He weaves seamlessly together the political and cultural significance of the flood, all while engaging the reader with stories about what the flood meant for everyday life. A fine achievement." --Lee Clarke, author of Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination

 

"Narratives of natural disasters often show swift and all-consuming devastation, but PARIS Paris Under Water is a story of waters rising.  Set against the backdrop of the world’s most beautiful city, the Seine itself is at the center of the story ­ from its role in making Paris a modern city to the day in 1910 when Parisians stood on its banks and watched it climb several feet a day, carrying debris from flooded towns in the countryside.  Through Jackson’s deft storytelling and first-hand accounts, we see the terror of watching a disaster slowly, methodically drown a city and a community’s fight to survive it." --Molly Caldwell Crosby, An American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our History

"Stories about Paris have left us with a rich profile of a city at the vanguard of political action and cultural life.  Yet Jeffrey H. Jackson’s new book muddies these familiar waters.  His gripping account of the 1910 flood recounts the highs and the lows of what happened when water “shorted out” the city of light.  With a knack for the diversity of human response to disaster and the historian’s eye for the telling detail, Jackson draws our attention to how nature interacts with our greatest of human-wrought environments:  the metropolis.  This book not only is an important tale, worthy of being told but it also will open the door to reconsiderations of the interaction of technology and the environment in ways that are vitally relevant today." --Vanessa R. Schwartz, It’s So French: Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture

“A spirited look at the Parisian move into "Syst'me D"—crisis mode.” --Kirkus

 

"An engrossing narrative" --Library Journal

 

 “Enlivened by period photographs of a flooded Paris, this is a capable, well-researched history of a modern city’s battle with nature” --Publishers Weekly

 

"Combining exhaustive archival research and such primary sources as the diary of the city's chief of police, the book creates a compelling image of what at the time was viewed as an epachal event in one fo the world's great cities.  It shows, in compelling fashion and with shades of Hurricane Katrina, how a city that has been often riven by divisions managed to come together to face a body blow from nature and how the City of Light managed to shine once again." --Michael Deibert

 

"Jackson ... has written an agreeably non-academic account of the Seine's rise and fall. He has also put together an excellent Web site -- www.parisunderwater.com -- that includes a number of photographs and a brief explanatory text. It is a useful companion piece to the book as well as a free-standing if brief story of the flood."  --Washington Post

 

"Jackson writes with clarity and confidence. As a reflective historian, he examines the event of 1910 in relation to the present day. . . . Jackson has a capacity for dramatic description."--Winnepeg Free Press

 

"{Jackson} does an excellent job not only on the aftermath and significance of the flood, but also on laying the necessary background to understand the state of Paris at the turn of the century, skillfully interweaving such complicated material as the 1870–71 siege and commune and Baron Haussmann’s redesign of the city in the 1890s into his narrative. . .. In addition to history and engineering buffs, the book will appeal to Francophiles hungry for more information about the city and readers of disaster narratives like Gary Krist’s The White Cascade. about America’s deadliest avalanche, and Daniel James Brown’s Under a Flaming Sky, about an 1894 firestorm in the American Midwest."--New York Journal of Books

 

 

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; First Edition edition (January 5, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230617069
• ISBN-13: 978-0230617063
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #288,631 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jeffrey H. Jackson is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Environmental Studies and Sciences Program at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.

During the fall of 2007, Jackson was a Fellow-in-Residence at the Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall in Paris. Also in 2007, the History News Network named Jackson a "Top Young Historian" in the US.

He has published on a range of topics, beginning with his first book "Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris" (2003). Based on this work, Jackson was invited to be a consultant for a documentary entitled "Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story" for "Great Performances" on PBS. He is also the co-editor of a collection of essays entitled "Music and History: Bridging the Disciplines" (2005).

Jackson received his B.S. in history summa cum laude with High Honors from Vanderbilt University in 1993 and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1999. At Rhodes College, he teaches courses in modern European history, cultural history, French history, and interdisciplinary Humanities. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Historical Association, and the Sinfonia Foundation.

For more information, visit: jeffreyhjackson.blogspot.com and www.ParisUnderWater.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A deluge of interesting history, January 11, 2010

By 

pizzapelsa (Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 (Hardcover)

Professor Jackson's book finally provides English-language audiences with a historical narrative of the little-known Paris flooding of 1910. While Paris is one of the most written-about cities, and this era (the belle epoque) is one of the most written-about periods in Paris history, Jackson has unearthed a gripping tale of belle epoque Paris that we have not yet heard much about. Largely relegated to local and popular memory in Paris, the flooding of 1910 is exactly the kind of forgotten moment that historians long to find hidden in the archive. Jackson's exemplary research and writing have done just that. In flowing, readable prose, Jackson describes the catastrophic flooding, the ways it shut down the city, and the ways that Parisians banded together to survive the disaster. Not just a story for those interested in the environmental history of natural disasters, this book focuses more on the human dimensions of the flooding - the disaster's social, political and cultural effects and the human response to disaster. The book is saturated with rich, detailed narrative of daily events during the flooding and eye-witness reactions from Paris memoirs and other texts, giving the reader a vivid sense of Paris's damp, cold and disorder in January of 1910. This story holds important lessons for students of disaster management, urban history, environmental history and French history, and Jackson has carefully crafted the book to be equally readable and rewarding for scholars and laypersons alike. This is excellent reading for those interested in how human communities (especially cities) respond to disasters like the Paris heatwave of 2003 or Hurricane Katrina.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evocative, Interesting Photographs, January 29, 2010

By 

Tootsie (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 (Hardcover)

Paris Under Water is a clearly written narrative about the flood of the Seine in Paris during January and February 1910. Jackson takes a lesser-known event and spins an evocative, non-fiction account of both unknown and well-known victims and both anonymous and famous places (especially memorable scenes include: the Louvre Museum threatened by rising water; the Orsay train station platforms seemingly lagooned and unusable; the Metro tunnels flooded and fetid). I especially loved Jackson's use of the period photographs that begin each chapter and are occasionally scattered throughout the text. They enliven the story and help the reader imagine the scene. Paris has been the subject of beautiful and touristy photographs for more than 100 years--it's fascinating to see Paris "underwater" and in a new way. Jackson and the photographs he chose also focus on the ways in which everyday Parisians pitched in and helped one another during the crisis--definitely a useful lesson as more and more disasters seem to threaten our world and require us once again to come to the aid of others.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting and important work of history, January 10, 2010

By 

Robert E (New Orleans, LA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paris Under Water: How the City of Light Survived the Great Flood of 1910 (Hardcover)

The mark of a high-quality work of history is the ability to weave compelling storytelling with an explanation of the story's deeper meaning. In "Paris Under Water," Jeff Jackson has given us such an achievement. The story of the flood--how it was caused, what damage it wrought, how Parisians responded--is recreated from a number of interesting sources and weaved into a gripping narrative. But his interpretation of the event, most notably the way in which the flood forged, strengthened, and embodied a national and local character and became an important "trial run" of national unity prior to the the Great War, deepens the experience for the reader.

Over the past few years, chronicles of disasters and the ways in which people respond to them have become increasingly relevant and interesting. Douglas Brinkley's "The Great Deluge," Rebecca Solnit's "A Paradise Built in Hell," Campanella's and Vale's "Resilient Cities," and others have delved into the intensity of post-disaster experiences. "Paris Under Water" joins these other important works as a must-read for anyone interested in the physical, civic, cultural, and spiritual components of disasters. And Jackson has established himself as a rare writer who gracefully bridges the often insurmountable gap between academic rigor and popular accessibility.