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

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Description

In this dazzling work of history, a Pulitzer Prize-winning creator 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 The us’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 1778; and helped to negotiate the peace of 1783. 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 emerges a particularly human and yet fiercely made up our minds Founding Father, as well as a profound sense of how fragile, improvisational, and international was our country’s bid for independence.

Benjamin Franklin began the “the most taxing assignment of his life” at the age of 70: to protected 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 vital famous men on this planet 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, although 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, along with serving as chief diplomat, banker, and director of American naval affairs.

Franklin recognized and accepted the truth that French aid was crucial to American independence, but some Founding Fathers resented him for making The us 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 side 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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