{"product_id":"the-house-of-fragile-things-jewish-art-collectors-and-the-fall-of-france-james-mcauley","title":"The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France - James McAuley","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-body1 DetailsTabs_html-content__dQoL5 mui-style-tgrox\"\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eA powerful history of Jewish art collectors in France, and how an embrace of art and beauty was met with hatred and destruction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe depths of French anti-Semitism is the stunning subject that Mr. McAuley lays bare. . . . [He] tells this haunting saga in eloquent detail. As French anti-Semitism rises once again today, the effect is nothing less than chilling.ââ\"Diane Cole, \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eElegantly written and deeply moving. . . . [A] haunting book.\"David Bell, \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eIn the dramatic years between 1870 and the end of World War II, a number of prominent French Jews \u0026amp;\"pillars of an embattled community\"invested their fortunes in Frances cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the country's army, and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-body1 DetailsTabs_html-content__dQoL5 mui-style-tgrox\"\u003e \u003cbr\u003eIn this rich, evocative account, James McAuley explores the central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the \u003ci\u003e\u003c\/i\u003efin de siecle. Weaving together narratives of various figures, some familiar from the works of Marcel Proust and the diaries of Jules and Edmond Goncourt, the Camondos, the Rothschilds, the Ephrussis, the Cahens , McAuley shows how Jewish art collectors contended with a powerful strain of anti-Semitism: they were often accused of invading France's cultural patrimony. The collections these families left behind \"many ultimately donated to the French state, were tragic attempts to celebrate a nation that later betrayed them.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-body1 DetailsTabs_html-content__dQoL5 mui-style-tgrox\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-body1 DetailsTabs_html-content__dQoL5 mui-style-tgrox\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-body1 DetailsTabs_html-content__dQoL5 mui-style-tgrox\"\u003eWiley Publishing 2022, paperback\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-body1 DetailsTabs_html-content__dQoL5 mui-style-tgrox\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"DetailsTabs_reviews-box__MlIpA MuiBox-root mui-style-1v28ako\"\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-h5 MuiTypography-gutterBottom mui-style-h2ouy6\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"MuiTypography-root MuiTypography-body1 mui-style-tgrox\"\u003e\"Engrossing. . . . Traces the long, vexed relationship of these families with materiality, their faith that they could 'create something beautiful in an increasingly hostile environment,' their attempt to control works of art as they could not control life.\"-Jackie Wullschlaeger,\u003ci\u003e Financial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A moving portrait of a glittering, doomed world.\"-\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Ghosts from the pages of Proust and the paintings of Renoir wander through sumptuously appointed salons and galleries, charmed to life by James McAuley in his alluring and disturbing history \u003ci\u003eThe House of Fragile Things\u003c\/i\u003e. . . . The depths of French anti-Semitism is the stunning subject that Mr. McAuley lays bare. . . . [He] tells this haunting saga in eloquent detail. As French anti-Semitism rises once again today, the effect is nothing less than chilling.\"-Diane Cole, \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A comprehensive and accessible account of one of the great communal acts of generosity-and then betrayal-in modern history.\"-Nicholas Wroe, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Deeply researched and elegantly written. . . . Astute and perceptive. . . . McAuley's nuanced narrative leaves the reader with a range of villains from which to choose.\"-Ori Z. Soltes, \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Provides a new narrative that is at once rigorous and sensitive [and] endows these 'houses of fragile things,' which are still standing today, with a new solidity and life.\"-Vincent Delieuvin, \u003ci\u003eArt Newspaper\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This group portrait re-creates the milieu of fin-de-siecle French Jewish dynasties like the Rothschilds and the Camondos through the art collections they amassed. . . . McAuley chronicles how many of his central figures were deported by the Vichy government and describes the fate of their collections. A study of 'obsessions with objects' becomes a darker tale.\"-\u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"McAuley's book provides not just an insight into the gathering and displaying of these collections, but into the lives of the men and women who put them together, and the extent to which they saw themselves as intrinsic members of the French establishment.\"-Caroline Moorehead, \u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Unsettling. . . . As much as McAuley seeks to recover histories effaced by the Holocaust, [he] emphasizes that these histories persist in our present.\"-Chelsea Haines, \u003ci\u003eArt in America\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Elegantly written and deeply moving. . . . A meditation on the shaping and expression of identities through the acquisition and donation of beautiful things, a glimpse into a world blasted to dust by the horrors of the twentieth century, and a tragic story about the unrequited love of men and women for a country that savagely turned on them. . . . [A] haunting book.\"-David A. Bell, \u003ci\u003eNew York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A well-judged investigation.\"-Julian Barnes, \u003ci\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"[McAuley] has a tenderness for his subjects framed by a beautiful moral register. His conclusions are chilling.\"-Helen Elliott, \u003ci\u003eThe Monthly\u003c\/i\u003e (Australia)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A superior book must convey a message or present ideas. It must contribute to enriching understanding. This work certainly meets these criteria.\"-Jay Levinson, \u003ci\u003eJewish Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"McAuley delicately revives the collections and stories of those the Nazis sought to annihilate. The result is compelling.\"-\u003ci\u003eChristie's Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An enlightening and deeply moving book. . . . As hard to put down as an exciting novel.\"-Harriet Devine, \u003ci\u003eShiny New Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A riveting and devastating account of a battle between the cultured and sophisticated fin de siecle Parisian art world-mostly but not exclusively Jewish-and the brutal greed of the Nazis, aided by the long-standing antisemitism of their French collaborators.\"-Anne Sebba, \u003ci\u003eJewish Quarterly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWinner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award, History category, sponsored by the Jewish Book Council\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Sixth Annual French Heritage Society Book Award\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrench Heritage Society Book Award Short List\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This is the book I have been waiting for. A magisterial account of aspiration and loss. Please read it.\"-Edmund de Waal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A haunting and melancholy book that brings to life a wealthy but beleaguered Jewish milieu that was determined to demonstrate its loyalty to France.\"-Philip Nord, author of \u003ci\u003eFrance 1940: Defending the Republic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A remarkable book. I've finished reading with a sense of wonder at the unknown world its author recreates for us, and with shock at how senselessly that world was destroyed.\"-Alice Kaplan, author of \u003ci\u003eLooking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Fascinating, sensitive and heartbreaking, deeply researched and elegantly written, filled with flamboyant dynasties of art collectors, McAuley guides us between the chic glamourous sophistication of the Paris art world and the murderous greed of the Nazis and their collaborators.\"-Simon Sebag Montefiore\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Beautifully written, astoundingly researched and penetrating in its gaze into an irrecoverable world, both Parisian, European and Jewish, James McAuley vividly revives a past now on the brink of escaping living memory. \u003ci\u003eThe House of Fragile Things\u003c\/i\u003e is a book about art, France, the Holocaust and what it can mean to be a Jew, that will haunt you long after you have read it.\"-Ben Judah, author of \u003ci\u003eThis Is London\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Wiley","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44810337845317,"sku":"203527","price":26.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0615\/9997\/3445\/files\/the-house-of-fragile-things-jewish-art-collectors-and-the-fall-of-france-james-mcauley-fragilethings-7116595.jpg?v=1774353864","url":"https:\/\/shop.sydneyjewishmuseum.com.au\/products\/the-house-of-fragile-things-jewish-art-collectors-and-the-fall-of-france-james-mcauley","provider":"Sydney Jewish Museum Shop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}