Herbert Lottman is the most loving and I believe the most authoritative of all students of Albert Camus. This short book is a treasure for anyone who cares about Camus' literature. If you are serious about Camus, you should read this book as well as Lottman's excellent biography of Camus, which was the groundbreaking work in all Camus scholarship and remains the best Camus biography.

Lottman's work on Camus has not been as well received as one might hope, and that is a great shame. Ironically, I think his reception by Camus scholars mirrors the incivility which the French elite reserved for Camus himself. I think the treatment both men received from the literati is explained by the fact that they are both outsiders. Neither man was a French native (Camus was an Algerian of French-Spanish descent and Lottman is an American expatriate living in Paris) and neither was a professional academic (Camus was a newspaper editor, a novelist, and a man of the theater, while Lottman is a journalist). It seems that the elite are simply never willing to admit any reason to listen to an outsider, no matter how worthy that person might be. That is so at least in retrospect, anyway; I think that as time passes the elite will recognize Lottman's greatness, just as, with time, they recognized the greatness of Camus.

Anyway, this book is a touching, very readable glimpse into the life of a fascinating man, by an author who himself clearly loves Camus and has taken great pains to paint him truthfully.

"The Fall of Paris, June 1940", by Herbert R. Lottman, sub-titled, "A Dramatic Narrative of the Final Weeks in Paris Before Its Capture by the German Army". HarperCollins, 1992.

This is a lengthy, (410 pages), well written book, describing the last five weeks or so of Paris as a free city before occupation by the German Army. The author, Herbert Lottman, a Native New Yorker, has written on other French subjects, including Marshall Petain, Albert Camus and Flaubert so Lottman is well prepared for this book. Each day from May 9, 1940 to June 23, 1940 is covered in a single chapter. The author did exhaustive research for each chapter. The book is exceedingly complete. After some reading, the reader can be so overwhelmed by the wealth of information that Lottman provides, that the temptation is to sneak ahead to the June 14th Chapter. June 14, 1940, is the day that German troops actually entered Paris.

Lottman brings to life the main actors in the French government, including Premier Paul Reynaud, his ever-interfering mistress, the old general Philippe Petain, and newly promoted general, Charles De Gaulle. By referencing their writings, the author also tells the tales of famous people, such as Jena-Paul Sarte, the philosopher, Maurice Chevalier, the actor, and many different journalists, including William Shirer and Clare Booth Luce. He does not, however, limit the personal reminiscences to the rich and famous, but includes recollections of the common people, including the French sergeant ordered to blow up the Eiffel Tower. Interestingly, one of the more memorable individuals in the book is the American Ambassador to France, William C. Bullitt, a friend of President Franklin Roosevelt. I wonder if H. Lottman chose some of the statements and actions of Ambassador Bullitt to provide a form of comic relief for the serious subject in this serious book.

Even in such a scholarly work, errors creep in. On page 341, he writes, "There were policemen here and their along their way." Clearly, too many possesive "theirs" are present. He wanted, "There were policemen here and there along their way". On page 394, in describing the visit of Adolf Hitler to a conquered Paris, Lottman terms Hitler, "Reichsfuehrer". Hitler was just simply "Der Fuehrer" and it was Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) who had the title of "Reichsfuehrer". Overall, though, the book is well written and complete to the point of exhaustion.

SUCH SWEET THUNDER is a posthumously released novel written in 1963 by Vincent O Carter. Several publishers rejected Carter's orginal manuscript and Carter died before he could see his work published. However, the manuscript was found 30 years later by Herbert Lottman in the possession of Carter's girlfriend. Lottman writes the foreword for the reborn manuscript and the only changes he made to the novel was the name from its original title ' The Primary Colors.'

SUCH SWEET THUNDER begins in 1944 when the reader meets Amerigo Jones who is a solider fighting in World War II. He is visiting a French prostitute and in her eyes, Amerigo envisions a woman from his youth. The story from this point is lyrical flashback to a segregated Kansas City of the 1920 and 30. The reader sees life from Amerigo's perspective as he deals with independence, love, sexuality and respect. Amerigo is a dreamer who realizes many of dreams will be unfulfilled because of his skin color.

SUCH SWEET THUNDER is a captivating coming of age story. It is well written and the novel enthralls the reader with the vivid descriptions of a young man's life. I am glad that Mr. Lottoman found the manuscript and completed the process that Carter started 40 years earlier.

Reviewed by Robilyn Heath
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

I,m absolutely delighted to see this book back in print as I ,ve been searching for itf for years. The enlarged photos give an even better view of the detail and workmanship in these tiny garments. IIt,s a lovely symbol of postwar renewal and optimism to be treasured always.

Although an accomplished and thorough book, it sometimes get bogged down in detail. However, it is a very carefully compiled and analytical book. Good selection of pictures and details of others artists in Camus' life. I enjoyed it greatly.

I think I most love this magnificent book because the chilly reception it has received mirrors the deeply ironic incivility the French elite reserved for Camus himself. One can love Camus for his words, his insight, and his passion, but I think I love him most for the fact that he was hated by idiots. It is this theme that runs throughout Lottman's wonderful biography, and it also seems to describe to an extent Lottman's own experience.

For nearly the last quarter of Camus's short life, he lived in disfavor amongst the Paris literati. And for what? Because he, virtually alone amongst French intellectuals, recognized early on the horror that was the true nature of the regime of Joseph Stalin(socialism being virtually an article of faith with the likes of Sartre and others in France at the time).

Lottman himself seems to have had a rather similar experience in his publication of this book. As he points out in his preface to this second edition, a cottage industry has evolved in France and elsewhere in Camus scholarship and criticism. However, though that body of work is deeply indebted to Lottman's research, his preeminent role is rarely acknowledged. I think this is probably because, like Camus, Lottman is an outsider. Neither man was a French native (Camus was an Algerian of mixed French-Spanish descent, Lottman is an American expatriate living in Paris) and neither is an academic by trade (Camus was a newspaper editor, novelist and a man of the theatre, while Lottman is a journalist). Thus, Lottman has seemed at times as unwelcome amongst the French elite as Camus did himself. Again the irony is too much; Lottman has received comparatively little recognition even though he himself is an extremely important cornerstone of current Camus research.

Anyway, this book for whatever reason has received little more attention here in the United States than it has gotten anywhere else, and I think that is a shame. It is a wonderful, readable book. Most importantly, it is non-judgmental and it is very deferential. By that I mean that Lottman nowehere preaches to us how we should understand Camus; as he himself says, the essence of an artist is not in his biography, but in his works. It is long, but has only that level of detail befitting an intellectual biography of this caliber.

For anyone who really wants to understand Camus's literature, a thorough understanding of his life--like Lottman's--is priceless.

Several books on Jules Verne (1828-1905) have been translated from French into English, including biographies by Verne's cousin (1928) and grandson (1976), and a study of the political themes in Verne's novels by Jean Chesneaux (1972). Now, for the first time, the reverse has occurred: a book on Jules Verne originally written in English has been translated into his native language. Sadly, Herbert R. Lottman's new biography of Verne, also published in France (in a translation by Marianne Véron), is not worthy of holding such a distinctive position in Verne studies. Although described by St. Martin's Press on the dust jacket as the first "modern biography" of Verne ever written, there is a long tradition of writing about the author, not only in French, but in English as well.
Lottman offers little literary analysis of Verne's works, and that which is present is cursory and often ill-considered. While the details of Verne's life are more developed, they are frequently marred by the author's determination to indulge in amateur Freudian analysis and to draw often highly questionable conclusions from his biographical data.
Generally, Lottman's discussion of Verne's writing is shallow, seldom extending beyond simple plot analysis. There is little evidence that Lottman has personally studied Verne's more than sixty novels and many additional short stories, plays, non-fiction, speeches, and poems. Approaching Verne's books in chronological order, Lottman makes little effort to examine the links between the works or the broader themes and narrative formulae which characterize Verne's oeuvre as a whole. Important issues such as narrative structure, 19th-century ideology, and stylistic innovation in Verne's works discussed over the past few decades by writers and scholars on both sides of the Atlantic are almost totally ignored (despite the fact that the author cites many of these critical works in his endnotes).
Lottman does not elucidate the cultural conditions that have played such a large role in determining Verne's literary reputation, nor does he attempt to explain how Verne still remains a best-selling author in this context. His observations on Verne's influence on science, culture, and literature are perfunctory.
Lottman does occasionally raise tantalizing questions about Verne's personal life, but despite his subtitle, An Exploratory Biography, many of these points are then never investigated. For instance, Verne wrote to his brother in 1893: "You and I both committed an enormous and irreparable blunder; you know which one, without having to be specific. Tear up this letter. But what a life we'd have had, without that blunder." Despite Lottman's dwelling on Verne's anti-semitism, he fails to examine the impact of Jules and his son Michel's different reactions to the Dreyfuss Affair; Lottman is typically content merely to say, "it was not the only time a family split over Dreyfuss".
Instead of using such material as a key to exploring Verne's creative psyche, Lottman chooses to classify him according to a preformulated psychological profile. He sprinkles the book with bits of Freudian analysis, but never fully develops this methodology so that it might lead to a full portrait of Verne the man or writer. Lottman labels Verne an "anal" personality, which
is used as a catch-all justification to explain such diverse matters as Verne's worries about income and the spendthrift proclivities of his son Michel.
With this book, Lottman lives up to his reputation for meticulous attention to detail, although at times he seems to dwell on minutiae. For a nonacademic, commercial writer, Lottman has done an impressive quantity of research, taking advantage of the Verne libraries in Amiens and Nantes. He has thoroughly perused the well-indexed Bulletin de la Société Jules Verne, a quarterly which, since the 1960s, has published scholarly articles and primary texts about Verne. Extensive endnotes cover twenty-three pages in the English edition, and thirty pages in the French edition.
To Lottman's credit, he does follow in the footsteps of many French Verne scholars to correct a number of factual errors that have appeared in earlier Verne biographies, and incorporates much of what has been discovered in the two decades since Jean Jules-Verne's biography. Lottman is much interested in the business details of Verne's life, as might be expected from one also who
makes his living by his pen, and these financial matters receive a full airing. He provides the first thorough account in any English-language biography of Verne's collaborations with Adolphe d'Ennery on turning his novels into plays. On the other hand, Lottman offers little discussion of Verne's occasional collaboration on novels with Paschal Grousset (André Laurie), or of
the role played by Verne's son Michel in the composition of the posthumous Voyages Extraordinaires. In the last decade, the original manuscripts have appeared in print, revealing that the first versions published in the decade after Verne's death were extensively rewritten by, and in some cases originated with, Michel.
Lottman's prose is generally highly readable and engaging. He has labored to produce what he clearly intends to be the definitive biography of Verne. He has accumulated a wide array of data, but has been unable to synthesize this mass of information in a meaningful way. Lottman's book is especially disappointing because the time is so ripe for an account that would fuse the new biographical discoveries about Verne with the many insights of recent Vernian literary criticism. By analyzing the strictly material side of Verne's life, Lottman has neglected the creative talents and the well-springs of imagination that produced the fiction for which Verne is remembered. Those readers seeking to understand the reasons why Verne is one of the most widely translated and enduringly popular authors of all time will find little explanation in this biography.

Jules Verne has been one of my favorites authors since I first read his "Journey to the center of the earth". Combining the prophetic scientifical ideas and the masterly skill of a storyteller, Verne never fails to astound and fascinates his readers.

Although not an "juvenile" any more, I still from time to time grabbed one of his books from my bookshelf and regaled myself with his captivating voyages. I always wonder how can a man have all those great ideas; are they derived from his imagination or his industrious study on science?

Now Lottman's book partly answers the question and solves the mystery of Jules Verne, whose public image is often out of accord with his real life. Lottman's research, including a lot of Verne and his family and his friends' correspondences, is detailed and authoritive.

Many anecdotes are interesting. For example: the idea of "Twenty thousands leagues under the sea" was first suggested by George Sand! In his youth, Verne exceled in Greek and literature but his scores on physics and chemistry were often poor. And, many books of Verne are influenced by Hetzel, Verne's book publisher, whose opinion often changed the plot of the whole story; captain Nemo, whose identity had been originally a Pole sworn to revenging the russia, but due to Hetzel, was finally changed into a Indian prince.

However, this book does not make one truly "understand" the character of the founding father of SF. Intending to be objective, Lottman does not judge Verne but only lists all relating facts that, after a lot of exhausting descriptions, we sometimes still do not know the true character of Jules Verne and many strange incidents about him: why should a cousin(Gaston Verne) shoot his uncle(Jules Verne) and make him lame for the rest of his life? What's really wrong with Jules Verne's son, Michel Verne? We read a lot of scathing reprimands about the latter from the former's letters but still don't know the reason. Was Michel Verne really a prodigal or had he commited some horrible crime, which must be kept a secret?

In spite of the weaknesses mentioned above, Lottman's biography still deserves reading, especilly for those longtime Verne's Fans. Though the master's life is still an enigma, this book at least shed some light on it.

Man Ray's experience in Paris is a fascinating and complex subject, certainly worthy of a book unto itself. Unfortunately the author of this book seems content to present his readers with out-of-date information. I do not pretend to be an expert on Man Ray. But I have researched extensively the life and photography of Berenice Abbott, whose own career and reputation is remarkably tangled up with Man Ray's. In Paris she worked for him as his darkroom assistant, shared his fascination for Eugene Atget's photographs, was fired by Man Ray (when Peggy Guggenheim called him on the telephone and requested a portrait sitting with her instead of him) and, until she moved back to the States in early 1929, competed with him for fashionable Paris portrait sitters. What I discovered in reading "Man Ray's Montparnasse" is that Lottman has not dug very deep into recently published scholarship, and thus perpetuates certain inaccuracies. For example, Lottman writes that Julien Levy, a mutual friend of Man Ray and Abbott, loaned Abbott money to purchase the Atget's archive in 1927, shortly after Atget's death. In fact, Levy did not invest in the Atget archive until 1930, three years later. Perhaps this seems like a minor detail, but for me it raises questions about the accuracy of the entire project. Moreover, other recent scholars have gotten this detail right, including Bonnie Yochelson in her 1997 book on Abbott, "Berenice Abbott: Changing New York: The Complete WPA Project" and Ingrid Schaffner in "Julien Levy: Portrait of an Art Gallery" (1998). For those interested in a more scholarly treatment of Man Ray's life and work, I highly recommend Neil Baldwin's 1988 "Man Ray: American Artist." For those fascinated by Paris in the early 20th century, I suggest Billy Kluver and Julie Martin's richly illustrated "Kiki's Paris: Artists and Lovers 1900-1930."

Although I cannot attest to the scholarly quality of "Man Ray's Montparnasse", I believe that Lottman provides insight into this Parisian art district.

The reader learns about the different bars/clubs that were important. He learns who met where; the locations of various artist studios; and the general feel of the era. The dissent in the da da movement and the surrealist movement was significant.

Man Ray's neutral role in all of this is interesting. Lottman makes it appear that obtaining portrait sitters was one of Ray's primary goals. That along with women and his cars.

I enjoyed the book and believe that there is much to be learned from it. Caveat: If there are historicals errors as the other reviewer mentions, then it is difficult to know what you can and cannot believe.

Upon perusing the book, many questions raced through my mind. However i thought the book was well written in a friendly and respectful style. Most historians paint the family in "Shylock" terms, perhaps justifiably so. Mr. Lottman is at his best when uncovering early bank ledgers and correspondance, not to mention the so-called anti-semitic diatribes of Rothschilds' detractors. However the failure to document the Jewish population vis-a-vis the population of others in the countries they inhabited, leaves the reader to assume that their numbers were commensurate with that of Europeans! This is a rather "strange" oversight for someone as astute and scholarly as Lottman. Maybe the reader would then understand the level of animosity and action taken against Jews. Another "faux pas" was the omission of a pamphlett known as the "Protocols of Zion", the bible of anti- semites; inducted in the British Museum in 1905, said to have come out of the Zionist Conference in Switzerland(1896), it reads as a world plot by the Elders to rule over the "Goyim" or cattle(Gentiles). Could this be the pamphlett that motivated Hitler and other tyrants? One never knows reading Lottman's book. Lastly, the race for African raw materiel and labor was despicable and inhumane at the least!! Lottman never weighs the impact on African lives and even glosses over the sizable death toll left behind by the exploiters! He makes you feel that industrialization and exploitation were a natural come-about and the Rothschilds, who financed many of these ventures were shrewd and virtuous. Aside from these "obscene" oversights, the book is still a must-read for serious students of comparative-history and even lay-persons. Lottman still delivers with an eloquent description of 19th century Europe...in all her panorama, warts and all. For those looking for a good read on a powerful family with many idiosyncrasies, super-ambitions and a penchant for making dough, this is it!!!