Chronicling General Lafayette's years in Washington's army, Vowell reflects on the ideals of the American Revolution versus the reality of the Revolutionary War. Riding shotgun with Lafayette, Vowell swerves from the high-minded debates of Independence Hall to the frozen wasteland of Valley Forge, from bloody battlefields to the Palace of Versailles, bumping into John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Lord Cornwallis, Benjamin Franklin, Marie Antoinette and various kings, Quakers and redcoats along the way.
Drawn to the patriots' war out of a lust for glory, Enlightenment ideas and the traditional French hatred for the British, young Lafayette crossed the Atlantic expecting to join forces with an undivided people, encountering instead fault lines between the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, rebel and loyalist inhabitants, and a conspiracy to fire George Washington, the one man holding together the rickety, seemingly doomed patriot cause.
While Vowell's yarn is full of the bickering and infighting that marks the American past - and present - her telling of the Revolution is just as much a story of friendship: between Washington and Lafayette, between the Americans and their French allies and, most of all between Lafayette and the American people. Coinciding with one of the most contentious presidential elections in American history, Vowell lingers over the elderly Lafayette's sentimental return tour of America in 1824, when three fourths of the population of New York City turned out to welcome him ashore. As a Frenchman and the last surviving general of the Continental Army, Lafayette belonged to neither North nor South, to no political party or faction. He was a walking, talking reminder of the sacrifices and bravery of the revolutionary generation and what the founders hoped this country could be. His return was not just a reunion with his beloved Americans it was a reunion for Americans with their own astonishing, singular past.
Vowell's narrative look at our somewhat united states is humorous, irreverent and wholly original.
' Vowell takes an open and observant 'Hey, that's nuts' stance toward past and present, which results in a book that's informative, funny and insightful.' Time
At once light-footed and light-hearted, Vowell's histories are - dare I say it - fun. And Lafayette is no different. Even amid defeats at Brandywine and despair at Valley Forge . . . Vowell emerges from the Revolutionary War with an unabashed smile on her face. I'd be surprised if her reader doesn't, too.' NPR.org
'Sarah Vowell turns her keen eye and droll wit to the American Revolution in her latest historical venture,Lafayette in the Somewhat United States . . . Vowell, of course, doesn't just give us the highlights; she offers a portrait of Lafayette and his older contemporaries, with whom he found friendship, glory, and endless bickering.' Cosmopolitan
'You can't beat Sarah Vowell for quirky chronicles of American history's dark side.'Chicago Reader
'Vowell takes on American history as only she can, this time with the story of Frenchman theMarquis de Lafayette, a Revolutionary War hero.' USA Today
'To impress the history buff at the table, read Vowell's (ever the expert in, really, everything) in-depth and irreverent account of George Washington's decorated general Lafayette, which also looks to our own political climate for context.' Marie Claire
'Nobody recounts American history the way Sarah Vowell does, with irreverence and humor and quirky details - history and facts, but also entertainment. Lafayette in the Somewhat United States is about the friendship between George Washington and the
