Book of the Day

I picked up this book expecting a straightforward biography, and instead found myself completely absorbed in something far more layered and urgent. Braude has crafted a portrait of Janet Flanner, a Paris correspondent for The New Yorker, that works simultaneously as intimate character study, historical reckoning, and true crime narrative. What makes it special is how these threads don't feel forced together—they're genuinely woven into the fabric of her life and work during one of Europe's most volatile periods.

Flanner arrived in Paris in the mid-1920s with romantic notions of writing about beauty and culture, but she had the intellectual honesty to recognize what was actually happening around her. While her editors wanted breezy dispatches about French art, she began documenting the rise of extremism, economic collapse, and the creeping dread that no one seemed willing to fully acknowledge. Simultaneously, she found herself drawn into reporting on a serial killer operating in the city's shadows. Braude moves between these narratives with real skill—the personal and the political never feel separate, because for Flanner they never were. Her journalism became an act of witness in an era when bearing witness mattered desperately.

The pacing is genuinely hard to resist. Braude writes with the momentum of someone who understands that history isn't abstract—it's lived in particular moments by particular people making choices. Flanner emerges as principled without being sanctimonious, ambitious without being ruthless, and deeply human in her uncertainties. If you're drawn to history that feels alive rather than dusty, or to stories about journalism as a form of moral reckoning, this will grip you. It's the kind of book that makes you think differently about what it means to pay attention and speak up.