Between 1869 and 1875, Paris was known to the world as "the new Babylon." A city obsessed with sex and money and ruled by the ailing tyrant Louis Napoleon and his ruthless wife Eugenie, Paris was a place of intensity, violence and volatility. Tracing Europe's most glittering capital as it tettered on the verge of the Franco-Prussian War and the horror that ensued, Christiansen evokes one of the most dramatic periods of modern history. photos.
