Book excerpt: Pastry Paris is a collection of photographs of the world’s most enticing pastries set against the background of one of the world’s most iconic cities. The confections are taken out of their display cases and photographed “on location” at Paris’ best-known sights and everyday streetscapes, illuminating the visual and cultural connections between the city, its architecture, its culture, and its wildly beautiful desserts. Each entry is captioned, and the back of the book serves as a guide to the pâtisseries where each of the pastries is created, with addresses, phone numbers, and métro stops. The quirky, often humorous pairings of desserts and their hometown is a vicarious trip to that delicious city, where art and beauty can be found in everything from doorknobs to petit fours, a city that takes its desserts as seriously as its music, sculpture, and painting.