Abbott Joseph Liebling's Between Meals (1962) is a singular reminiscence about his year as a student in Paris during the twenties. Born in New York City, Liebling paid his first visits to Paris as a child on European tours with his family, but it was not until 1926 that he was to enjoy an extended stay in the city, a year as a student at the Sorbonne. Shortly before his death, he drew upon this experience to write the group of New Yorker and Vogue pieces which constitute most of the text of Between Meals. He says of his visits to Paris: "if I had compared my life to a cake, the sojourns in Paris would have represented the chocolate filling. The intervening layers were plain sponge."

He attended Dartmouth College from 1920 until 1923, when he was expelled for repeated absences from chapel. Following graduation from the Columbia Graduate School of...