La Cause Perdue

The Smoking Contest

Sparks fly in this amusing bi-lingual love story between an American man who can’t stand to be in smoking environments and a French woman who simply refuses to give up cigarettes. He’s a writer, she a stage director trained in the Russian theatre, but at present with no dramatic company of her own. They meet in Paris at a time when smoking has been banned in France but also at the very moment a well-financed commercial effort is afoot to bring back the past. Cigarette and cosmetic companies unite to rekindle the joie de vivre of smoking in the public’s consciousness. In a homage the past, the business interests stage a national smoking contest for women and our heroine decides to become a contestant –much to the irritation of her American lover. Their relationship is already in distress as our heroine suspects that her lover has betrayed her with at least two women.

The First Pariah State

The often-forgotten global story of how the Confederacy lost its bid for sovereign nationhood In 1861, proslavery secessionists severed ties with the United States, launched the Confederacy, and readied their new government to join the international community as a sovereign nation. In The First Pariah State, Robert Bonner tells the story of how a transatlantic publicity campaign dashed Confederate hopes by ostracizing its rebellion as an immoral, global menace. The international anti-Confederate campaign built on existing antislavery themes but moved far beyond them. Improvised indictments circulated secessionists’ most incendiary words across the world. The Union and its foreign allies condemned the marauding Southern navy for disrupting high-seas commerce, violating civilized norms, and preparing for the resumption of the African slave trade. Abraham Lincoln and Senator Charles Sumner sought to convert rhetorical barbs and maritime anxieties into novel doctrines of international law designed to counter rogue regimes. And Union opinion-makers, including Black abolitionists, worked with European supporters to stymie the South’s naval expansion, war finances, and diplomatic efforts to gain formal recognition. International worries about the Confederate rebellion waned after U.S. victory, and the Southern pariahdom of the 1860s left few enduring traces in international law or overseas remembrances. In fact, over the next century and a half, the pro-Confederate “Lost Cause” mythology proved to be as powerful abroad as it was within the restored United States.

La cause perdue