Edmond Charles Genet (1763-1834), known as Citizen Genet, French emissary to the United States, influenced American foreign relations as well as the formation of America's early two-party system. Edmond Genet was the scion of prerevolutionary French...

The story of Chanel reads like a fairy tale: After her mother dies, a young French peasant girl is left at an orphanage by her father, a womanizing peddler. As a budding beauty, she takes to the concert-hall stage, thrilling the local gallants...

'He was an adolescent cut like a giraffe and constantly struggling with huge glasses that kept sliding down his nose. He had a false air of idleness about him. In fact, he was more reserved than timid.' Edmonde Charles-Roux, Coco Chanel's biographer and...