Schiff, Stacy
A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America
- ISBN 13:
- 9780805080094
- author:
- Schiff, Stacy
- format:
- Paperback
- publisher:
- Owl Books (NY)
- language:
- English
- Publication Year:
- 2006
- Pages:
- 528
- Dimensions:
- 140mm X 23mm
- Genre:
- History - U.S.
- Condition:
- New
- Availability:
- Item usually sent within 5 working days
Description
Benjamin Franklin's eight-year mission to France was a gamble of his career, driven by fame, charisma, and ingenuity. With little diplomatic training and limited French, he outmaneuvered British spies, French informers, and hostile colleagues to engineer the Franco-American alliance of 1778 and negotiate the peace of 1783. This narrative account reveals the most revealing part of Franklin's life, drawing from new and little-known sources. It is a rousing tale of American infighting and the treacherous backroom dealings at Versailles that propelled George Washington from near decimation at Valley Forge to victory at Yorktown. A Great Improvisation offers a particularly human and determined Founding Father, as well as a profound sense of how fragile and improvisational America's bid for independence was.
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