The Paris Edition: 1927-1934

Best known in later life as an authority on the food of France and Italy, Root, who died in 1982, became a newspaperman with the Paris Edition of the Chicago Tribune in 1927, and these memoirs of his early years there describe a time and a world that continue to attract thousands of Americans. As he shows in this charming memoirone of the most pleasant ever written about Paris and about journalismlife on the Trib could be both funny and exasperating. Here are amusing encounters with Col. Robert McCormick, the paper's eccentric, dictatorial owner; Harold Stearns, the master borrower among the expatriates; Robert McAlmon, cadaverous poet, publisher of little magazines, indefatigable cafe sitter and party-goer; petite Louisette, the handmaiden of the newspaper staff. Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Charles Lindbergh, William L. Shirer and Gertrude Stein are tantalizingly glimpsed. Abt is an editor on the International Herald Tribune in Paris. (June 1)