French Seduction: An American’s Encounter with France, Her Father, and the Holocaust (Carroll & Graf, $23.95) is feminist art historian Eunice Lipton’s passionate attempt to reconcile opposing characteristics in French culture and society. An amalgam of history and personal narrative (as was the author’s wonderful study of Manet’s model in Alias Olympia), French Seduction scrutinizes both what is so enticing and so repellent about France. Lipton, whose father romanticized Paris for her and who today lives there half the year, has sustained a rocky love affair with this most sensuous of European cities.