Alice Kaplan discusses her new book, Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag and Angela Davis (University of Chicago Press, 2012), that tells how their sojourns in the City of Light changed the lives of three extraordinary American women, who would each go on to become key figures in American cultural, intellectual, and political life.

Alice Kaplan is the John M. Musser Professor of French at Yale University. Her previous books include The Collaborator (2000), French Lessons: A Memoir (1993), and The Interpreter (2005).

To read an excerpt from Dreaming in French in the Chronicle on Higher Education, please click here.