Facebook friends know I buy, read and mostly keep a lot of used books. Call it an obsession.

My most recent acquisition is titled “France Will Live Again: The Portrait of a Peaceful Interlude 1919-1939,” by Samuel Chamberlain. It was priced at $3 new in December 1940, a bit less the other day for the frail used copy.

For the modern reader, the book is an interesting leap back in time.

Like Ernest Hemingway, Chamberlain served in the Red Cross ambulance corps during World War I.

He decided to remain in France, devoting himself to photographing and drawing French villages, towns and cities, cathedrals and churches, the seashore, bridges, cottages, farms, manors and chateaux.

Eventually, he decided that much of this would be destroyed in the coming war, and therefore documented it in his book. Much of it was.

Some of the sites I’ve seen while visiting France, especially during my and Dorette’s three-month retirement sabbatical on the Riviera in 2010.

We rented an apartment a few miles east of Nice in the town of Menton and used it as home base for our travels. Thus my favorite Chamberlain drawing is the one of Menton, shown above.

At the right, is a photo I took in Menton. Notice that the church steeple is the same, although much of the town has changed during the 70 years since publication of the Chamberlain book.

Menton remains on my list of places to see again.