Dunlop, Catherine Tatiana. The Mistral: A Windswept History of Modern France. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2024.
The Mistral. Cover.
The Mistral. Cover.
Excerpted from The Mistral: A Windswept History of Modern France by Catherine Tatiana Dunlop, published by the University of Chicago Press.
© 2024 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
The copyright holder reserves, or holds for their own use, all the rights provided by copyright law, such as distribution, performance, and creation of derivative works.
Every year, the chilly mistral wind blows through the Rhône valley of southern France, across the Camargue wetlands, and into the Mediterranean Sea. Most forceful when winter turns to spring, the wind knocks over trees, sweeps trains off their tracks, and destroys crops. Yet the mistral turns the sky clear and blue, as it often appears in depictions of Provence. The legendary wind is central to the area’s regional identity and has inspired artists and writers near and far for centuries.
This force of nature is the focus of Catherine Dunlop’s The Mistral, a wonderfully written examination of the power of the mistral wind, and in particular, the ways it challenged central tenets of nineteenth-century European society: order, mastery, and predictability. As Dunlop shows, while the modernizing state sought liberation from environmental realities through scientific advances, land modification, and other technological solutions, the wind blew on, literally crushing attempts at control, and becoming increasingly integral to regional feelings of place and community. (Source: The University of Chicago Press)
Excerpted from The Mistral: A Windswept History of Modern France by Catherine Tatiana Dunlop, published by the University of Chicago Press.
© 2024 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.