A wonderfully readable, elegant look at French civilization by the perceptive mind of Edith Wharton. These impressions were cobbled together by Wharton in 1919 and divided into chapters with titles such as "Taste," "Intellectual Honesty" and, most tellingly, "The New Frenchwoman." This facsimile edition is published in cooperation with the Edith Wharton Restoration at the Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts. Written in Paris during the last two years of WWI, it celebrates what Wharton considers the typically French concern with Glory, Love, Voluptuousness, and Pleasure.  (FRN55, $14.95)