The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France

Excellent, well-written, and richly informative.Here the reader is brought into the cultural lives of four wealthy and interconnected Jewish families located in France during the most tumultuous decades of the last century. One learns of the tension between living as a Jew in France and being accepted as true citizens (the Dreyfus Case, as prime example); the impulse by Jewish leaders to acquire culturally important artifacts; the hard lot of talented women in finding fulfillment within families dominated by men; the use of museums gifted to the French state to establish a sense of permanence and acceptance, and, finally, the often brutal end exemplified by the city of the mute, Drancy.Dr. James McAuley is a young historian of talent and insight. His book will win prizes.

I will never forget the familys' profiled in this sublimely written, ultimately heartbreaking, book. I've lived in Paris off and on for twenty-five years. I've visited the Camondo Musee more times than I can count (a favorite with guests), knowing only a very small part of the family's history. I finished reading The House of Fragile Things a few days ago and am still haunted by it. Perhaps I always will be. Perhaps I always should be.

Very well researched and I'm glad that I read it as part of history but some of it is too detailed and reads too much like a history text.

Although the scope was a bit limited, the research was fantastic. He obviously reads French and actually read a lot, for example, some of the anti-Semitic articles of Droumont in Le libre parole. I thought I knew a lot about the Camondo family but I learned details I had never known. The last chapter, revealing a personal approach, was very nice.

A totally fabulous book. Exactly what I wanted for a paper I am working on. The fragile things in the title refer not only to the decorative arts and paintings collected by wealthy French Jewish families during the belle époque and later, but to the fragility of their lives in Paris during WWII.

The book was purchased for a recipient who is an avid reader. He liked the book. I was told it is an interesting book and filled with facts.

I received this book from the publisher for review through NetGalley. All opinions are my own. The author writes a unique text on art and war history. He uses diaries, letters and historical accounts to provide insights into the French way of life during and after the war. The basis is the way the collecting of artifacts and French cultural items were appreciated and loved by the aristocratic Jewish families and the plunder of the artifacts with deportation of the owners. The information is little known and book was well written to inform of research gleaned from among the papers and memoirs as well as memories by surviving family members. Highly enjoyable read.

Indeed and in fact as James McAuley deftly describes the Collections and the Museums that the wealthy few Jews believed would embed them securely in the hall of fame and acceptance in France only to find that their very being as Jews would foil any such notion. The careful collecting of objects of beauty and their tasteful ( unless Drumont and other anti semites would proclaim "tasteless") installation would cement their safe and appreciated positions in upper class French society did not. The layering of these hatreds essentially doomed these efforts. The pernicious effects of anti semitism remain ever present. There are NO good Jews and certainly not ones with good taste. The entire tale is heart breaking. A must read to better understand the on going damage of hatred.

Meticulously researched and exquisitely written, this work brings the lives and times of a selection of elite French Jewish art collectors back to life in a way that is thoroughly engaging and moving. It certainly manages to avoid the dry, rebarbative tone of many works which have their origins in a doctorate. I got a sense of a historian who revisits and continues to ask questions about his subjects over time (as opposed to holding on to a rigid thesis).Psychologically perceptive, McAuley provides convincing pictures of the emotional investment the collections and the buildings which housed them represented. This should be of interest to anyone interested in the social, political and artistic history of the period spanning the late 19th century through to the Nazi invasion. It is considerably enhanced by a wealth of visual illustrations: family snapshots or professional posed photographs as well as colour plates.