In a country where philosophers, writers and journalists are accorded adulation generally reserved in America for rock stars, professional athletes and super models no star shines brighter than that of Bernard-Henri Lévy.

As a first time author and a Gentile, why this subject?

When I decided to write fiction, I wanted architecture to be central to the plot...

How the French Invented Love  sprang from a lifetime of reading French literature and observing French society.  I wanted to find a way to present my love affair with France to an American public,

The daughter of political refugees from Soviet Hungary and granddaughter of Hungarian Jewish victims of the holocaust, a fact that was withheld from her until adulthood, Kati Marton continues to discover her roots through her writing.I first met her in New York in 1995 on the occasion of the publication ofA Death in Jerusalem in which she discussed the assassination of Folke Bernadotte, the UN emissary to Palestine, by the Stern Organization.

 During World War II thousands of Allied pilots crashed or parachuted into Occupied Europe. Over three thousand were saved through the courageous efforts of ordinary citizens who hid them in their homes, created false identity papers and in many cases evacuated them over the Pyrenees into Spain.

If you have been an assiduous reader of my newsletters then you have frequently encountered the name Albert Nahmias, my Paris culinary ‘rabbi.” In the 1001 Arabian Nights secret doors open when one says Abra cadabra but in Paris the doors of some of the world’s finest restaurants open to the likes of me,when I say: “Albert Nahmias.”

Charles Neal is a San Francisco-based French wine and spirits importer and the author of Armagnac and the just published Calvados: The Spirit of Normandy. We sat down over a cup of coffee during my recent trip to the Bay Area.