![]() ![]() ![]() Equally riveting are the stranger-than-fiction details of the underbelly of early-modern Paris. Juicy court gossip and the tangled love lives of royalty and hangers-on against the backdrop of an expanding Versailles is fascinating. Court life and the machinations of Louis XIV’s many mistresses are lavishly described. “City of Light” is more than a biography of La Reynie’s career. Mud taxes, animal regulations, fines for emptying chamber pots into the streets, and a special tax to place lanterns along the streets (creating the “city of light”) slowly improved the quality of life in Paris, even while causing grumbling among the citizenry. A flurry of ordinances cleaned the streets and lit the night. In 1667 Nicolas La Reynie was appointed lieutenant general of police with the objective of imposing law and order on the disordered city of Paris. ![]() Combining the research skills of an academic and a storyteller’s flair, Vanderbilt Professor Holly Tucker brings the crime-riddled Paris of the late 1600s to life in the excellent history “City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris.” At its center is the “Affair of the Poisons” which touched both the glittering heights and impoverished lows of French society. ![]()
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