A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America - Hardcover

Schiff, Stacy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805066330 ISBN 13: 9780805066333

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2005

Synopsis

In this dazzling work of history, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author follows Benjamin Franklin to France for the crowning achievement of his career

In December of 1776 a small boat delivered an old man to France." So begins an enthralling narrative account of how Benjamin Franklin-seventy years old, without any diplomatic training, and possessed of the most rudimentary French-convinced France, an absolute monarchy, to underwrite America's experiment in democracy.

When Franklin stepped onto French soil, he well understood he was embarking on the greatest gamble of his career. By virtue of fame, charisma, and ingenuity, Franklin outmaneuvered British spies, French informers, and hostile colleagues; engineered the Franco-American alliance of l778; and helped to negotiate the peace of l783. The eight-year French mission stands not only as Franklin's most vital service to his country but as the most revealing of the man.

In A Great Improvisation, Stacy Schiff draws from new and little-known sources to illuminate the least-explored part of Franklin's life. Here is an unfamiliar, unforgettable chapter of the Revolution, a rousing tale of American infighting, and the treacherous backroom dealings at Versailles that would propel George Washington from near decimation at Valley Forge to victory at Yorktown. From these pages emerge a particularly human and yet fiercely determined Founding Father, as well as a profound sense of how fragile, improvisational, and international was our country's bid for independence.

About this title

About the Author

Stacy Schiff is the author of Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2000, and Saint-Exupery, which was a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize. Schiff's work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and The Times Literary Supplement. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

Schiff, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Véra, (1999) a biography of Vladimir Nabokov’s wife, expresses her deep appreciation for Franklin in this informative biography. Critics agree that A Great Improvisation is a worthy addition to the recent spate of literature on the Founding Fathers (see below); the strength lies in her detailed depiction of Franklin’s seven-year political rendezvous with France and her true-to-life characters. A few critics faulted her for downplaying Franklin’s diplomatic achievements, and, while Schiff impressed some with her epigrams and wit, to others her storytelling felt dry. Overall, Schiff’s book adds another nuanced layer to our understanding of Franklin and the 18th-century French landscape.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Numerous bestselling volumes have been written recently on the man one biography called "the first American." Pulitzer Prize-winner Schiff (for Véra[Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov]) eloquently adds to our understanding of Benjamin Franklin with a graceful, sly and smart look at his seven-year sojourn in France in his quasi-secret quest to secure American independence by procuring an alliance with the French. Drawing on newly available sources, Schiff brilliantly chronicles the international intrigues and the political backbiting that surrounded Franklin during his mission. "A master of the oblique approach, a dabbler in shades of gray," she writes, "Franklin was a natural diplomat, genial and ruthless." She deftly recreates the glittering and gossipy late 18th-century Paris in which Franklin moved, and she brings to life such enigmatic French leaders as Jacques-Donatien Chaumont, Franklin's closest adviser and chief supplier of American aid, and Charles Vergennes, the French minister of foreign affairs, who helped Franklin write the French-American Alliance of 1778. Franklin also negotiated the peace of 1783 that led not only to the independence of the colonies from Britain but also to a bond between France and America that, Schiff says, lasted until WWII. Schiff's sure-handed historical research and her majestic prose offer glimpses into a little-explored chapter of Franklin's life and American history.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Yet another book on Benjamin Franklin would seem to be the last thing that anyone needs to cut down trees for right now, but this meticulously researched account captures a key moment in his history, and in ours, with verve, élan, and wit. Schiff concentrates on the years from 1776 to 1783, when, as the American commissioner in Paris, Franklin was charged with the tricky task of securing the support of monarchist France for a republican revolution. Schiff's Franklin is at once diplomat and flirt, scientist and intriguer. She shows him, above all, as a man of immense resourcefulness who mixed an idiosyncratic cocktail of courage and cynical manipulation for the highest of national, and intellectual, ends.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

*Starred Review* Benjamin Franklin, often regarded as a supreme expression of the innovative and dynamic spirit of the New World, actually spent a large chunk of his later life in Europe. First he served as the agent and liaison with Parliament for several colonies in London. Then from 1776 to 1783 he represented the rebellious American colonies in France, where he successfully forged an alliance that engendered American independence. Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has recounted Franklin's diplomatic efforts in a brilliant, absorbing, and frequently funny book. Franklin, who was 70 years old and spoke minimal French when his mission began, is revealed here as manipulative, occasionally devious, but consistently dedicated to the cause of American liberty. His task was formidable, since he had to overcome the reluctance of French monarchists to support a republican revolution. Even those French eager to bloody the British nose doubted the viability of the American military effort. Franklin also had to fight a rear-guard action against rivals on the American diplomatic team. Yet, as Schiff illustrates, Franklin marshaled his immense personal charm and his intuitive political skills to navigate treacherous waters again and again. This is an outstanding chronicle of an American icon peforming perhaps his greatest service to his country. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From A Great Improvisation:
Typically after an ocean crossing Franklin's eyes brimmed with tears at the sight of land; he had just withstood the most brutal voyage of his life. For thirty days he had pitched about violently on the wintry Atlantic, in a cramped cabin and under unremittingly dark skies. He was left with barely the strength to stand, but was to cause a sensation. Even his enemies conceded that he touched down in France like a meteor. Among American arrivals, only Charles Lindbergh could be said to have met with equal rapture, the difference being that Lindbergh was not a celebrity until he landed in Paris. At the time he set foot on French soil Benjamin Franklin was among the most famous men in the world. It was his country that was the great unknown. America was six months old; Franklin seventy years her senior. And the fate of that infant republic was, to a significant extent, in his hands.

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805066330
• ISBN 13: 9780805066333
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512