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

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

    • 3.0 • 2 Ratings
    • $14.99

    • $14.99

Publisher Description

“In December 1776, a small boat delivered an old man to France.” So begins a dazzling narrative account of Benjamin Franklin’s French mission, the most exacting–and momentous–eight years of his life.

When Franklin embarked, the colonies were without money, munitions, gunpowder or common cause; like all adolescents, they were to discover that there was a difference between declaring independence and achieving it. To close that gap Franklin was dispatched to Paris, amid great secrecy, across a winter sea thick with enemy cruisers. He was seventy years old, without any diplomatic training, and possessed of the most rudimentary French. He was also among the most famous men in the world.

Franklin well understood that he was off on the greatest gamble of his career. But despite minimal direction from Congress he was soon outwitting the British secret service and stirring passion for a republic in an absolute monarchy.

In A Great Improvisation Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff offers an utterly fresh and thrilling account of Franklin’s Parisian adventure and of America’s debut on the world stage. Schiff weaves her tale of international intrigue from new and little-known primary sources, working from a host of diplomatic archives, family papers, and intelligence reports. From her pages emerges a particularly human Founding Father, as well as a vivid sense of how fragile, improvisational, and international was our country’ s bid for independence.

GENRE
Biographies & Memoirs
NARRATOR
JC
Jason Culp
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
09:50
hr min
RELEASED
2005
March 22
PUBLISHER
Random House Audio
SIZE
499.1
MB

Customer Reviews

hetaira45 ,

This is the Abridged version

Be aware this is the abridged version, there is also an unabridged recording which is more than twice the length.

Listeners Also Bought

The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
2022
And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (Unabridged) And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (Unabridged)
2022
Cleopatra Cleopatra
2010
The Path Between the Seas (Abridged) The Path Between the Seas (Abridged)
2003
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (Unabridged) The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (Unabridged)
2020
Team of Rivals (Abridged) Team of Rivals (Abridged)
2005