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Title details for For Liberty and Glory by James R. Gaines - Available

For Liberty and Glory

Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions

by James R. Gaines
Norman Dietz
Audiobook
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They began as courtiers in a hierarchy of privilege, but history remembers them as patriot-citizens in a commonwealth of equals.


On April 18, 1775, a riot over the price of flour broke out in the French city of Dijon. That night, across the Atlantic, Paul Revere mounted the fastest horse he could find and kicked it into a gallop.


So began what have been called the "sister revolutions" of France and America. In a single, thrilling narrative, this book tells the story of those revolutions and shows just how deeply intertwined they actually were. Their leaders, George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, were often seen as father and son, but their relationship, while close, was every bit as complex as the long, fraught history of the French-American alliance. Vain, tough, and ambitious, they strove to shape their characters and records into the form they wanted history to remember. James R. Gaines provides fascinating insights into these personal transformations and is equally brilliant at showing the extraordinary effect of the two "freedom fighters" on subsequent history.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 29, 2007

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400125487
      • File size: 615436 KB
      • Duration: 21:22:09

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      The story told here is both sweeping and complex. James Gaines traces the intertwined histories of the American and French Revolutions by examining the lives and adventures of friends and colleagues George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette. Each man offers a narrator multiple challenges: Washington kept to a carefully maintained public face. Lafayette moved between languages and continents. Once the narrative is well underway, Norman Dietz does a respectable job. He moves smoothly between languages and manages to evoke different voices, even those reading letters from third parties. At the beginning, however, Dietz's pace is so slow that it's distracting. It doesn't match the content of the history he's recounting and flattens its emotional impact. G.T.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      In three interwoven biographies, Sheila Weller chronicles the life and times of three tradition-breaking women singer-songwriters--Carole King, a Brooklyn-born earth mother; Joni Mitchell from the Canadian prairie; and Carly Simon, wealthy New Yorker, radiant, sexy, and riddled by stage fright. Narrator Susan Ericksen has a ball dishing the rock 'n' roll dirt with the girls. Ericksen lends a lovely melodic tone to the stories of these tunesmiths who became the voices of a generation of women. Her reading is controlled and intelligent. Of the women, Weller interviewed only Carly Simon personally, but the book works pretty well, weaving together magazine quotes and interviews with friends and lovers. Ericksen makes the material sound like a novel. No, three novels. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from July 16, 2007
      In this absorbing and learned study, Gaines (Evening in the Palace of Reason
      ) chronicles the friendship of two great generals along with the American and French Revolutions, bringing great insight to both. He questions the standard theory that Lafayette and Washington had a father-son relationship and argues that the two men were the “founding fathers” of the centuries-long political alliance between France and America. This book is distinguished as much by the writing as the argument. Gaines’s fresh narrative of the very familiar late–18th-century revolutions is exemplified by his exploration of the important role the playwright Beaumarchais played in French politics. With his typical flair for including perfect, cunning details, Gaines points out that Beaumarchais’s nickname, “fils
      Caron,” sounded remarkably like the name of his theatrical hero Figaro. Thus, when Figaro debuted in the radical play The Barber of Seville
      , the “self-consciously savvy audience knew exactly who they were watching on stage.” Gaines also captures the drama of tense moments, such as Lafayette’s public call for a convocation of the Estates-General. This winning volume will likely overshadow David Clary’s Adopted Son
      .

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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