A collection of monologues for young adults from their teens to their twenties, organized by age group and gender. Monologues from this collection have been included in two other anthologies. This second edition includes revised versions of two monologues as well as three additional monologues.

The Bastille is most known for being destroyed - it has endured as a symbol of absolute power that fell to popular anger. But few people, even in France, know anything about the actual prison, notably what it was like inside and the details of how the prisoners were really treated. As it happens, Linguet, once quite famous as a lawyer and journalist, was not only in it, but wrote about the experience, and did so only a few years before it fell - some of have said this book provoked its fall. Certainly it helped raise popular indignation against what many Parisians knew only as a looming...

Le Grand d'Aussy ends his three-volume history of French food with these exuberant chapters, bristling with colorful details, about how fine dining in France grew more formal and more ambitious, remaining extravagant (by today's standards) even after the sometimes stunning, sometimes laughable excesses of the Middle Ages were reigned in and more sophisticated service and entertainment replaced a host of mechanical devices, pantomimes, and outright exotica. Le Grand draws on a classic cookbook and several forgotten memoirs to bring a wealth of details on menus, table decoration, royal...

Is bacon fat meat? Chicken? Cheese? Eggs? All of these have been considered, at different times, meat or meatless foods by the Catholic Church. The eighteenth century historian Le Grand d'Aussy included several long passages on the complex history of Catholic fasting in France in his master work on the history of French food. Taken together, they explore the often surprising twists and turns this practice took from the time of the Franks to his own. Throughout the Old Regime, the distinction between meat and fast-day foods was central to French dining; the exact definitions, however, of what...

Overview Green eggs were popular once, and long before Dr. Seuss, in France. Poached eggs were served with orange juice and spices. Easter eggs inspired not egg hunts, but loud, raucous processions. Cheese might be eaten with sugar and even cinnamon. Brie and Parmesan cheese were popular long before modern times. Butter could be preserved with salt, but also by being melted and put in earthenware jars. On fast days, when meat was forbidden, sometimes eggs were allowed, in other periods they were not; the same thing was true of milk and cheese. These facts are all found in the brief but...

Overview The Gauls sat on hay (or maybe dog skins) to eat; the Romans lay on couches; the Franks preferred benches and stools. For a long time, lighting came from candles and torches. Dishes could be made of metal, marble, glass, porcelain, earthenware, and other materials. Silver and gold were used not only for platters but sometimes even for tables. The eighteenth century writer Le Grand d'Aussy takes a sweeping look at the furniture and furnishings used for meals over hundreds of years in France. In the process, he highlights some key developments in French industry: the introduction of...

"Your heart's pounding, you sweat, and you feel like you're going to vomit..." Tom Cruise Tom Cruise is far from the only celebrity to overcome bullying to attain huge success. If bullying is a problem for many in high school, it is even more of a problem for those who are different - which often means those who are particularly gifted in some way. What a bully makes a curse may later turn to be a great gift. But too many young people give up before that can happen, turning to substance abuse or even suicide. This collection of monologues looks at this national problem from many different...

Coffee, tea and chocolate were all still newcomers to France when the eighteenth century historian Le Grand d'Aussy wrote his history of French food and drink. He includes his look at what was then still their recent history in a section on non-alcoholic drinks. But first he looks at the cold ones, notably lemonade, also a relative newcomer, yet already popular enough that those who sold coffee, flavored drinks and even ice cream were known as *limonadiers* - lemonade-vendors. Some of the drinks they sold - rossolis, populo, cedar sours, vinegar syrups - have long been forgotten, while others...

This brief medieval cookbook was found centuries after the Viandier, the most famous of the French medieval cookbooks. It was written under Philip the Fair, when meals were supposed to be simpler than in Taillevent's time, and so unlike the later cook's work, it is simply organized by types of food, not different services. Its author was unknown, though he was certainly a professional cook. The foods described include simple fare like beef and pork and more exotic foods like peacock, swan and lamprey; sauces like cameline (cinnamon) are also mentioned along the way. This new translation...