The Count of Concord - Softcover

Delbanco, Author Nicholas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564784959 ISBN 13: 9781564784957

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 2008

Synopsis

Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, was―as Nicholas Delbanco writes―“world famous in his lifetime,” yet now he has been “almost wholly forgotten.” Like Delbanco himself, Sally Ormsby Thompson Robinson―the narrator of this novel and the Count’s fictional, last-surviving relative―is “haunted” by one of history’s most fascinating and remarkable figures. On par with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Count Rumford was, among many other things, a politician, a spy, a philanthropist, and above all, a scientist. Based on countless historical documents, including letters and essays by Thompson himself, The Count of Concord brings to life the remarkable career of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford.

About this title

About the Author:

Nicholas Delbanco is the author of more than two dozen works of fiction and nonfiction including, most recently, Lastingness: The Art of Old Age. He is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English at the University of Michigan, where he directs the Hopwood awards program and was for many years the director of the MFA program in creative writing.

From Publishers Weekly:

From humble beginnings in colonial New Hampshire through to the courts of imperial Europe, Delbanco (Spring and Fall) imaginatively maps the deeds, misdeeds and accomplishments of the real-life polymath Benjamin Thompson (1753–1814), an American contemporary of Franklin and Jefferson, and their equal in scientific inquiry and sociological (if not philosophical) thought. Thompson has been neglected by American history because he was a Tory—i.e., he sided with the British during the Revolution—who was eventually made a count of the Holy Roman Empire under Francis II. Delbanco covers that material nicely, but is equally interested in Thompson's cunning study of household thermodynamics and horticulture, and his invention of such appliances as roasters and coffee pots. Along the way, Delbanco celebrates Thompson's social reforms and innovation (Thompson patented none of his gadgets, believing that they should belong to the poor) and his military genius, while casually detailing the married Thompson's libertine lifestyle and varied sexual peccadilloes. Unfortunately, the story is told from the point of view of Sally Ormsby Thompson Robinson, Thompson's fictional present-day descendant: her rat-a-tat voice is often intrusive, and the whole ends up more a collection of variously colorful set pieces than a character-driven novel. (May)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1564784959
• ISBN 13: 9781564784957
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 478