![]() ![]() Yet heroes do emerge: the foreign minister Elihu Washburne, who protected civilians during the Franco-Prussian War, and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the star of the book’s final chapters, whose best work was created in Paris and, marking the book’s principal theme, lives on in the public spaces of America. McCullough’s story is driven by mood more than by drama. Morse, in the early part of the century, to later arrivals, including Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent. The only other Ann Patchett book I have read was Bel Canto, which I enjoyed immensely, yet the synopsis of State of Wonder left me feeling it was not for me. ![]() ![]() but I was in Paris and the world was before me.” These recollections of an American art student express the sense of awe and exuberance that fills McCullough’s history of nineteenth-century American painters, sculptors, writers, and doctors who came under “the spell of Paris, derived from light, color, and architecture.” The cast ranges from James Fenimore Cooper and Samuel F. The Greater Journey, by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster $37.50). A different sort of darkness than Conrad paints, for sure, but one whose murky depths contain both beauty and betrayal. ![]()
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