A Taste for Provence

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz explains how Provencewhich a mid-twentieth-century tour guide called mostly dry, scrubby, rocky, arid land”became a land of desire” associated with a slower, richer way of life. Horowitz reveals the social forces and individuals who created the idea of Provence both in France and, critically, in the United States. Horowitz demystifies Provence and the perpetuation of its image today, even as she revels in its atmospheric, cultural, and culinary allures. Answering her key question--What did Americans know about Provence and when did they know it?”--takes us back to Thomas Jefferson’s travels there and through to the mid-20th-century construction of it as a light-filled, relaxing idyll.