The Women of Montparnasse – The Americans in Paris –

“… In The Women of Montparnasse Cody demonstrates that the artistic and social life of the Left Bank was largely organized, directed, and nourished by resourceful, resolute, and talented women, ranging from te amateur publisher of Ulysses, Sylvia Beach, to the witty, insightful New Yorker correspondent Janet Flanner. Here, too, are Josephine Baker, the ebullient black dancer and singer who mothered a ‘Rainbow Tribe’ of adopted orphans from many countries; Hadley Hemingway, Ernest’s shy wife; the gifted teacher Nadia Boulanger, who instructed composers Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson; Zelda Fitzgerald, for whom Paris was as debilitating as it was for her famous husband; Gertrude Stein … Alice B. Toklas … Lady Brett Ashley …”