An Illustrated Talk and Book Signing by Leonard Pitt

Saturday, August 14, 2010
5:00 to 7:00pm

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." - Ernest Hemingway
 
The invention of the postcard in 1869 sparked a communication revolution equal to the birth of email in our own day. The postcard industry boomed in fashionable Paris, with Parisians and tourists alike enthralled by this quick, informal way of sending messages and hand-tinted photographs of the city they loved. At the turn of the century, France was producing one million cartes postales a day.
 
Chateau Sonoma invites you to view a Paris captured at the height of this golden age. Berkeley collector Leonard Pitt shares his collection of postcards showing life in the city's boulevards, streets, shops, dance halls, and cafés. Pitt's accompanying notes take viewers on the ultimate nostalgia trip, revealing social and architectural details of a Paris that has, for the most part, vanished.
 
Leonard Pitt is the bestselling author of Walks Through Lost Paris, Paris Postcards: The Golden Age, and the forthcoming Paris: A Journey Through Time.