[HIGHLIGHTS] When Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in Le Figaro: “The European is wrong to visit American cities as we visit Paris or Venice”

In 1945, the American State Department invited a few French journalists to discover the United States. For eight weeks, the author of Being and Nothingness is transported to the four corners of the country.

In New York, in Chicago itself, the skyscraper is at home, it imposes a new order on the city. But everywhere else it is out of place. The eye cannot establish any unity between these large asparagus and the little houses which run low to the ground. All that remains are volumes, all varieties of polyhedra. Between them, enormous voids, wastelands cut out in the sky. It seeks in spite of… The FIGARO ARCHIVES - The U.S. in 1945: A Biography of the American Skyscraper, by Jacques-Louis David, published by Picador, is published by Random House, priced £16.99. To order a copy of the book for £12.99, call the MailOnline Bookshop on 08457 90 90 90, visit a local branch or click here.