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A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, by Stacy Schiff
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Amazon.com Review
Benjamin Franklin began the "the most taxing assignment of his life" at the age of 70: to secure the aid of the French monarchy in helping the fledgling United States establish their republic. The job required tremendous skill, finesse, and discretion, and as Stacy Schiff makes clear in this brilliant book, Franklin was the ideal American, perhaps the only one, to take on the task, due in large part to his considerable personal prestige. One of the most famous men in the world when he landed in France in December 1776, his arrival caused a sensation--he was celebrated as a man of genius, a successor to Newton and Galileo, and treated as a great dignitary, even though the nation he represented was less than a year old and there were many doubts as to whether it would see its second birthday. Though he had no formal diplomatic training and spoke only rudimentary French, Franklin managed to engineer the Franco-American alliance of 1778 and the peace treaty of 1783, effectively inventing American foreign policy as he went along, in addition to serving as chief diplomat, banker, and director of American naval affairs. Franklin recognized and accepted the fact that French aid was crucial to American independence, but some Founding Fathers resented him for making America dependent on a foreign power and severely attacked him for securing the very aid that saved the cause. Schiff offers fascinating coverage of this American infighting, along with the complex political intrigue in France, complete with British spies and French double agents, secret negotiations and backroom deals. A Great Improvisation is an entertaining and illuminating portrait of Franklin's seven-year adventure in France that "stands not only as his greatest service to his country but the most revealing of the man." --Shawn Carkonen
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From Publishers Weekly
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.
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Product details
Hardcover: 512 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (April 2, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780805066333
ISBN-13: 978-0805066333
ASIN: 0805066330
Product Dimensions:
6.4 x 1.6 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.9 out of 5 stars
79 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#995,562 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Stacy Schiff is one of my favorite living historians. Another is Ron Chernow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Alexander Hamilton.†Here is what Chernow has to say about Schiff: “Even if forced at gunpoint, Stacy Schiff would be incapable of writing a dull page or a lame sentence.â€It’s true; Schiff has the unique ability to bring the distant past to life, all to our collective benefit. Compared to Ptolemaic Egypt (“Cleopatraâ€) or Puritan New England (“Witchesâ€), capturing the pulse of diplomatic life in late eighteenth-century France is a cinch for her.“The Great Improvisation†is a great read. There are many reasons to recommend it. First is Schiff’s wonderful sense of irreverent wit. For instance, when discussing the parade of dubious French officers seeking a commission to fight in America she quips, “The French nobility included a fair number of eight-year-old majors and fourteen-year-old colonels, every one of them burning to be nineteen-year-old generals.†Or when Temple Franklin, Benjamin’s grandson and unofficial secretary in France, got his mistress pregnant, Schiff notes that the unfortunate young woman had born “Franklin’s illegitimate son’s illegitimate son an illegitimate son.â€But probably the best reason to recommend “The Great Improvisation†is that it offers a clear window into the machinations of the American delegation in Paris during the War of Independence. Schiff’s core thesis is simple: “France was crucial to American independence, and Franklin was critical to France.†She constructs her delightful narrative around this argument.Schiff calls the American delegation a “great improvisation†for good reason. The inchoate nation in rebellion against the British had no experience at statecraft, little understanding of the recondite procedures required to conduct diplomatic affairs at the courts of European nobility, and no financial credit upon which to draw to equip an army of farmers and mechanics. Congress sent the best tool they had at their disposal: Benjamin Franklin. It was an inspired choice, according to Schiff: “Franklin was a natural diplomat, genial and ruthless… [His] stature was the most the dangerous weapon in the American arsenal.â€â€œThe obvious man for the job on one side of the ocean [Franklin],†Schiff writes, “He was the ideal man on the other.†The French adored Franklin from the moment he landed on their shores in November 1776. He embodied everything the French wished America represented: modesty, industry, and virility. He was the tamer of lightning, proof that nature ennobled the gifted. Nevertheless, Franklin was embarking into uncharted waters. “He was inventing American foreign policy from whole cloth,†Schiff says, “teaching himself diplomacy on the job, while serving as his country’s unofficial banker.†Franklin was particularly poorly suited for the latter responsibility, according to Schiff. “By nature Franklin was a streamliner and a simplifier, while everything about the procurement business was baroque and protractedâ€France may have loved their new American ambassador, but the same cannot be said for Franklin’s fellow American representatives to Europe; almost every other American sent across the Atlantic on a diplomatic mission came to despise him. “The higher Franklin rose in the [French] public pantheon,†Schiff writes, “the lower he sank in the estimation of his colleagues.†Arthur Lee, a Virginian appointed envoy to Prussia and Spain, called Franklin “the most corrupt of all men.†Ralph Izard, a South Carolinian who served as the commissioner to the Court of Tuscany, noted in his diary, “Dr. Franklin was one of the most unprincipled men upon earth: that he was a man of no veracity, no honor, no integrity, as great a villain as ever breathed.†John Adams, the future president and fellow delegate to France, had for Franklin “no other sentiments than contempt or abhorrence...†[he was] “the demon of discord among our ministers, and curse and scourge of our foreign affairs.†His only ally, besides his grandson, was Silas Deane, the Connecticut lawyer originally sent to France as a secret envoy in 1776, who was recalled by Congress in light of allegations of financial impropriety. Indeed, the rancor, backstabbing, and competing personal alliances that Schiff describes makes the American delegation at Valentois outside Versailles sound like a contemporary reality TV show: part Downton Abbey, part Real Housewives of New Jersey.Schiff is far more forgiving of Franklin’s behavior during his nearly decade-long mission to Paris. She believes that the trouble between the commissioners could be chalked up to “miscommunication, misapprehension, and misrepresentation.†Yes, Franklin had a tendency to sleep late, not answer his mail, spend too much time with female admirers, keep poor records, and not share information freely with his co-commissioners, but he was, nevertheless, indispensable to the American mission at the court of Louis XVI. Schiff maintains that the American cause could not have survived without the French – it was “her bedrock, her polestar, her salvation†– and the French alliance may very well never have come off without Franklin. Vergennes, the French Foreign Minister, conceded “[Franklin’s] age and his love of tranquility leave him with an apathy incompatible with his responsibilities,†but defended his position as essential to maintaining strong Franco-American relations.Franklin was never given his proper due for his service abroad, according to Schiff. He returned home under a cloud of suspicion, stoked in Congress by his erstwhile co-delegates, and harbored resentment about his treatment for the rest of his life. It didn’t help that “Massive obscurity reigned in Congress as to how much aid France had extended America, and on what terms,†primarily because Franklin had failed to accurately record many of the transactions. But he was successful in getting the French to back the American cause with loans, weapons, military sundries, and – perhaps most important of all – naval support, without which the revolution would have been doomed. (The one thing the French sent that the Americans had no use for was those 19-year-old French generals.)Like all of Schiff’s books, “The Great Improvisation†is highly recommended: it’s fun, insightful, and educational.
I must admit straight away.....I had to put this book down about 60% through out of sheer fatigue. This is my second effort with Ms. Schiff (the other: Cleopatra) and as before I find her work ponderous and labyrinthine. She does have genius for a turn of phrase --weaving in a reference to Strunk and White, for example-- but these flares of wit are far too few for the volume of pages she produces. She needs a really omnivorous editor to follow her around where ever she writes and make a hearty meal of words to reduce this work to something considerably more digestible to the more casual reader. Nonetheless, she does help us appreciate the intrigues of European politics during the American revolution, and my regard for Franklin grows more due to her portrayal. And she adds a factor about Franklin's tenure in Paris that our history books seem to disregard.....to wit, Voltaire's return to Paris in early 1778, and Franklin's shrewd use of the atmosphere these two men create in the salons, and the politics, of France.
Good book, but a difficult read. The author uses a lot of French words, so if you don't know French and don't like looking up words then you won't like it. This is my 5th non-fiction history read in a row and this is the hardest one to get through. Also, not very exciting, I think it's a bit drawn out for the amount of content revealed. Still, very interesting subject and gave me much insight on how we obtained France's help during the revolution.
Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize winner, has written another outstanding book. A Great Improvisation won the 2006 George Washington Book Prize. As with her other works, this book is a wonderful telling of the role Benjamin Franklin played in France on behalf of the United States as well as his own interests. Schiff does not gloss over Franklin's imperfections, but rather places them squarely in the context of the man so that the reader can delight in understanding Franklin. This is key because Franklin acted out of a myriad of interests and some of those were deeply personal. While Franklin fulfilled his duties in France, he did so in a way that alienated many people including those who worked with him on a daily basis. Schiff also portrays the main characters that worked with Franklin such as Silas Deane, Arthur Lee, John Adams, and the French Foreign Minister, comte de Vergennes. Vergennes was the most important of the French, but Schiff also delves into the many French who interacted with Franklin over his time in Paris which was almost nine years. Schiff manages to convey the long and tedious time Franklin spent fighting with his colleagues as they rode the ups and downs of the Revolution. Diplomats get a very non glamorous job during war, but they play a major role in the success of a country in war. Franklin and company were no exceptions. Schiff also explains the desperation which surrounded the American mission as well as the success of the British in penetrating the mission with its spies. In a truly bizarre scenario, the British had first rate knowledge of what the Americans were doing, yet could not parley that into wartime success. The book is good with the details about the other things Franklin did in Paris besides work for the Americans. Those details flesh the book out and give it more than a monotone diplomatic history feel. The lack of footnotes hurt badly. I prefer footnotes in my history books. Other than that the book is an excellent read and I highly recommend it.
Stacy Schiff is an extraordinary author! Her book, as her others, is absorbing. It was hard for me to put the book down. The story is stunning and paints a portrait of Benjamin Franklin that is remarkable.
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