Amazon.com 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
Founding Fathers are hot stuff these days. Benjamin Franklin, with two major bios in the past three years (Morgan and Isaacson) and re-publication of others by H.W. Brands and Gordon Wood, may be the hottest. Into this crowd wades Stacy Schiff, whose elegant and witty biography of Vera Nabokov won a 2000 Pulitzer (and whose previous bio of Saint-Exupéry garnered a nomination). Why step from uncommon byways onto a crowded boulevard?
Happily, Schiff's breezy, cosmopolitan, but never superficial style is excellently suited to the open-minded satirist and scientist, and a tale that reads like a cruel farce. _A Great Improvisation_ focuses on just eight years of Franklin's 84-year life, starting in 1776 when he was sent to Paris by the Continental Congress at the age of 70 to get France into the war. Fortunately, France regarded Franklin as a celebrity genius, which was more than many of his colleagues back home in Congress thought of him.
Franklin was "honest, but not too honest, which qualifies in France as a failure of imagination." He could "indulge in the ingenious and wholly specious argument, a staple of French conversation." His defense of French admiral d'Estaing was "a shining tribute to benevolent ignorance. (And one that happened accidentally to be accurate.)" Surrounded by spies, he had papers and money stolen. The other Americans in Paris squabbled endlessly with one another, accusing the French of deceit and intrigue even more than the British. Franklin's co-commissioner, Arthur Lee, "was ideally suited for the mission in every way save for his personality, which was rancid."
Poor trans-Atlantic communications enabled the Paris delegation's enemies to poison Congress against them, especially Franklin, who risked censure several times. He also was beset by psoriasis boils, gout and bladder stones. Schiff does not neglect Franklin's poor relations with much of his family, and his flirtations with French ladies, widowed and married. It's a wonder it all came out so well. Not a little of the credit goes to Franklin's skill as "a natural diplomat, genial and ruthless." When he was "rebuffed, he played hard to get"!
France ended up backing the colonies' successful revolution with men, arms, ships, and aid that would be worth $13 billion today. Americans who carp about Gallic "ingratitude" for their 1940s rescue might consider whether we were paying a 160-year-old debt.
With writing this good, it's startling to encounter a false note: more than once, Schiff uses "adverse" when "averse" is the word she wants. The book also shows rare but regrettable signs of sloppy editing. Franklin's grandson Temple is said to be 18 upon their arrival in Paris in mid 1777, but thirty pages and five months later he is 17. The news of Burgoyne's capture as a prisoner after the Battle of Saratoga is reported to hit Paris on Dec. 4, 1778, which is a year late.
Nevertheless, Schiff handles a broad array of characters and events with élan. Her book reads like a spirited production by Merchant-Ivory.
With the spate of recent biographies of Benjamin Franklin over the past 5 years, Stacy Schiff has narrrowed her focused upon his diplomatic mission to France during the American Revoluntion. Without Mr. Franklin's successful wartime treaties with the French, the American Revolution would have certainly failed.
Well-written, interesting and meticulously researched, this book is for the reader with an interest in diplomacy and a desire for further details of Mr. Franklin's personal exploits in Paris. "A Great Improvisation" highlights the non-military "battles" of the American Revolution.
For a broader perspective, the reader is referred to the fine biographies of H.W. Brand's "The First American" (2000) at 760 pages, Walter Isaacson's "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life" (2003) at 600 pages and Gordon Wood's "The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin" (2004) at 300 pages. Mr. Brand's work devotes over 100 pages to Franklin's diplomacy during the same time period.
The most valuable insight author Stacy Schiff provides in her enlightening and entertaining historical treatise is that despite our own self-serving myths about emancipation, the American Revolution did not reflect the action of a single country coming of age. Rather, the revolution marked the debut of the United States onto the imperial stage where France and the rest of Europe had already been players. In fact, the foreign aid provided by France during the revolution was essential to the outcome of the uprising. Critical to getting these funds from the French monarchy was Benjamin Franklin, already 70 years old in 1776. The story of the 8 ½ years he spent in Paris, persuading the French to support the fledgling American army in concrete as well as symbolic ways, is the subject of Schiff's book. The story of how it was obtained is fascinating and messy, as diplomacy often is. That's because Franklin knew that he and his compatriots had roles in a much larger drama. As the title implies, he was open to spontaneous inventiveness when it came to fostering foreign relations. Schiff attributes Franklin's success to his laissez-faire attitude, an ability to be logical without being pedantic, and a single-minded approach both genial and ruthless.
Franklin and his cause are always at the center of events in the book, but Schiff's in-depth and scholarly research, as well as a sharp gift for vivid period re-creation, makes us the labyrinth of personalities and complex issues involved. She effectively shows how the U.S. forged a rocky trans-Atlantic alliance with France, the ramifications of which are still being felt today. During those years, Franklin lived in houses teeming with French spies and British agents, having no secretary except his own adept grandson, and receiving from Congress new emissaries and contradictory or ineffectual directions. Adding to the challenge was the colorful French cast of characters with whom Franklin continually bargained. They ranged from Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, the flamboyant secret agent who became an important early arms dealer; to the young Marquis de Lafayette, who received the weapons and sailed recklessly to America against the king's order; to the stubborn British ambassador to Versailles, the Viscount Stormont. Perhaps the most intriguing and heretofore unknown character was the Chevalier d'Eon, a cross-dressing dragoon officer who became a notable supporter of the young republic's cause. The American cast of characters was no less of a challenge to Franklin. His American colleagues in Paris-some of whom were also supposed to be representing America in France, and some of whom stayed on the congressional payroll but simply never went to their postings in other countries-were full of complaints about Franklin. Schiff paints a vivid picture of the infighting among Adams, Jay, Richard Izard, Arthur and William Lee, Silas Deane, and the various other American representatives. Then there is John Adams, whom Schiff sees as a cantankerous politician who resented Franklin as he was deified by his French admirers. What irked Franklin's American colleagues was the difference between the man and the myth.
Through all the back-biting treachery, Franklin managed to persuade the French government to support the war with its navy, gunpowder, thousands of soldiers, and provide contributions which would amount to thirteen billion in today's dollars. And, when the English finally admitted defeat, Franklin, along with John Jay and John Adams, negotiated a most beneficent peace. This is an impressive story providing yet another dimension to this familiar figure. Schiff has written a lively story with a cast of colorful characters and plot twists that could easily compare to a work of historical fiction. I recommend reading this book in tandem with John J. Miller's and Mark Molesky's polarizing "Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France" to get an even fuller context of the U.S. relationship with France through the years.
Just when you think you've read everything there is to know about Ben Franklin, along comes this wonderful book by Stacy Schiff which centers on Franklin's efforts to secure an alliance with France that ultimately helped America gain it's Indepdendence. I will submit that eventually the rebels would have won without French military aid, although the war would have lasted much longer...but that it was the French money that was perhaps the biggest aid to the colonists as England was bankrupt and the cost of the war was astronomical.
Franklin is shown here not only to be the well-spoken statesman, but a sly, covert operative as he begins his mission to procure the French aid. This is a lively narrative that brilliantly captures the feel of 18th century France with intrigue that matches any of todays top-selling thrillers made all the more fascinating because they were real life events and people. Rife with humor, anecdotes, and period writings, and meticulously researched, Schiff gives us yet one more reason to admire Franklin's genius.
Populated by characters worthy of Dickens (including a theatrical producer, a dyspeptic diplomat and a female impersonator), ranging from back alleys to country estates to the royal court, combining elements of espionage, political deal-making, dangerous liaisons and the price of fame, "A Great Improvisation" has a you-are-there immediacy and tells an irresistible story that just happens to be at the heart of our survival as a country.
"Silas Deane was stranded in Paris, sick with anxiety, and nearly out of invisible ink." Every book should begin this well. All the wonderful adjectives others have used to describe this book are true.
A tip: if by chance you are writer and you give this book to your mother and after finishing it she asks why you can't write like Stacy Schiff, the best reply is just, "Who can?" Then leave the room and count to ten.
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Franklin the Fascinated Francophile, June 6, 2005