The Blue Touch Paper A Memoir

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The Blue Touch Paper: A Memoir

Author : David Hare
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393249190
Total Pages : 245 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (932 download)

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Book Synopsis The Blue Touch Paper: A Memoir by : David Hare

Download or read book The Blue Touch Paper: A Memoir written by David Hare and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-11-02 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Extraordinary. . . . This is no butterfly-watching stroll through a life.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times David Hare has long been one of Britain’s best-known screenwriters and dramatists. He’s the author of more than thirty acclaimed plays that have appeared on Broadway, in the West End, and at the National Theatre. He wrote the screenplays for the hugely successful films The Hours, Plenty, and The Reader. Most recently, his play Skylight won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Revival on Broadway. Now, in his debut work of autobiography, “Britain’s leading contemporary playwright” (Sunday Times) offers a vibrant and affecting account of becoming a writer amid the enormous flux of postwar England. In his customarily dazzling prose and with great warmth and humor, he takes us from his university days at Cambridge to the swinging 1960s, when he cofounded the influential Portable Theatre in London and took a memorable road trip across America, to his breakthrough successes as a playwright amid the political ferment of the ’70s and the moment when Margaret Thatcher came to power at the end of the decade. Through it all, Hare sets the progress of his own life against the dramatic changes in postwar England, in which faith in hierarchy, religion, empire, and the public good all withered away. Filled with indelible glimpses of such figures as Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams, Helen Mirren, and Joseph Papp, The Blue Touch Paper is a powerful evocation of a society in transition and a writer in the making.

The Blue Touch Paper

Author : David Hare
Publisher : Faber & Faber
ISBN 13 : 0571294359
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (712 download)

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Book Synopsis The Blue Touch Paper by : David Hare

Download or read book The Blue Touch Paper written by David Hare and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2015-08-28 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When, in 2000, the National Theatre published its poll of the hundred best plays of the 20th century, David Hare had written five of them. Yet he was born in 1947 into an anonymous suburban street in Hastings. It is a world he believes to be as completely vanished as Victorian England. Now in his first panoramic work of memoir, ending as Margaret Thatcher comes to power in 1979, David Hare describes his childhood, his Anglo-Catholic education and his painful apprenticeship to the trade of dramatist. He sets the progress of his own life against the history of a time in which faith in hierarchy, deference, religion, the empire and finally politics all withered away. Only belief in private virtue remains. In his customarily dazzling prose and with great warmth and humour, David Hare explores how so radical a shift could have occurred, and how it is reflected in his own lifelong engagement with two disparate art forms - film and theatre. In The Blue Touch Paper David Hare describes a life of trial and error: both how he became a writer and the high price he and those around him paid for that decision.

Locating Imagination in Popular Culture

Author : Nicky van Es
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000223876
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Locating Imagination in Popular Culture by : Nicky van Es

Download or read book Locating Imagination in Popular Culture written by Nicky van Es and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Locating Imagination in Popular Culture offers a multi-disciplinary account of the ways in which popular culture, tourism and notions of place intertwine in an environment characterized by ongoing processes of globalization, digitization and an increasingly ubiquitous nature of multi-media. Centred around the concept of imagination, the authors demonstrate how popular culture and media are becoming increasingly important in the ways in which places and localities are imagined, and how they also subsequently stimulate a desire to visit the actual places in which people’s favourite stories are set. With examples drawn from around the globe, the book offers a unique study of the role of narratives conveyed through media in stimulating and reflecting desire in tourism. This book will have appeal in a wide variety of academic disciplines, ranging from media and cultural studies to fan- and tourism studies, cultural geography, literary studies and cultural sociology.

Musical Theatre

Author : David Henson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1137605669
Total Pages : 114 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (376 download)

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Book Synopsis Musical Theatre by : David Henson

Download or read book Musical Theatre written by David Henson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-16 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible and engaging second workbook on musical theatre, presenting students with the next steps for extending their skills in acting, dancing and singing. Filled with imaginative practical and theoretical exercises, this workbook reveals the anatomy of musical theatre and offers inspiration, challenges and companionship along the path to successful performance. In so doing, it enables students to structure their time and hone their abilities, so that they can achieve their full potential in what is seen as an exciting but intimidating field. Through this interactive approach, students are challenged to take responsibility for their own learning and development, by closely examining the acting, singing and choreographic demands of musical theatre. This is an ideal text for undergraduate students on musical theatre degree programmes, and general theatre and performance programmes where optional modules on Musical Theatre are offered. In addition, this resource is well suited to students taking accredited and non-accredited Diploma courses in musical theatre.

We Travelled

Author : David Hare
Publisher : Faber & Faber
ISBN 13 : 0571369529
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (713 download)

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Book Synopsis We Travelled by : David Hare

Download or read book We Travelled written by David Hare and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'David Hare's great quality has always been his refusal to accept the division between fact and imagination. His creative invention is fired by public realities and in turn he makes those realities feel deeply personal. That same quality is wonderfully at work in his essays and poems. Whether he is writing about Tony Blair or Joan Didion, whether he is writing out of love or rage, evoking the intimate moments of his own life or the great moral questions of our times, he brings his subjects to life with an irresistible immediacy. All the wit, combativeness, energy and edge he has brought to the stage are present here on the page.' Fintan O'Toole I can't remember if I had any plans for the twenty-first century. I was already 52 when it arrived. But events raced off in such unexpected directions that any possible ideas must have gone out the window. Many of us shared the sensation that history was speeding up. Recording dizzying changes in culture and politics, these elegant essays range in subject from the photographer Lee Miller to the Archbishop of Canterbury, from the actress Sarah Bernhardt to the rapist Jimmy Saville, from a celebration of Mad Men to a diagnosis of the incoherence of Conservatism in the new century. The poems, in contrast, are private: tender meditations, filled with love, memory, vulnerability and the melancholy of ageing. This is a powerful compilation of prose and poetry by one of the distinctive thinkers of our time.

Buzz Books 2015: Fall/Winter

Author :
Publisher : Publishers Lunch
ISBN 13 : 0996288600
Total Pages : 725 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (962 download)

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Book Synopsis Buzz Books 2015: Fall/Winter by :

Download or read book Buzz Books 2015: Fall/Winter written by and published by Publishers Lunch. This book was released on 2015-05-13 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seventh edition of Buzz Books is a treasure-trove of substantial excerpts from dozens of the most highly-touted books to be published this fall/winter. Our “digital convention” features such major authors as Geraldine Brooks, Lauren Groff, Alice Hoffman, Janice Lee, Ron Rash, and Adriana Trigiani. We showcase debut novelists you’ve already heard of—Sloane Crosley, Jesse Eisenberg, and Amy Stewart—and anticipated new voices such as Virginia Baily (Early One Morning) and Claire Vaye Watkins (Gold, Fame, Citrus). Our nonfiction selections range from Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir to revelations on aging by Dick Van Dyke; new work from New York Times bestselling authors Jane McGonigal and Eric Weiner; and a memoir by Dan Marshall that will be featured at this year’s Book Expo America convention on the Editors Buzz panel: Home is Burning. Many of our Buzz Books authors also will be in attendance at BEA. We’ve grouped titles into sections for fiction, debut fiction, and nonfiction titles. If these great samples aren’t enough to fill your fall reading lists, we start with an extensive report on the entire fall/winter publishing season, with over 100 notable forthcoming books in all that you will find covered and promoted in the months ahead. Start reading some of the best future books right now, and invite your friends and book groups to download their own free copy of the ebook from any major ebookstore or at buzz.publishersmarketplace.com. And for the best in children’s literature, be sure to look for Buzz Books 2015: Young Adult Fall/Winter (9780990835363), also available now.

The Upstairs Delicatessen

Author : Dwight Garner
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 037460343X
Total Pages : 126 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (746 download)

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Book Synopsis The Upstairs Delicatessen by : Dwight Garner

Download or read book The Upstairs Delicatessen written by Dwight Garner and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Garner gathers a literary chorus to capture the joys of reading and eating in this comic, personal classic. Reading and eating, like Krazy and Ignatz, Sturm und Drang, prosciutto and melon, Simon and Schuster, and radishes and butter, have always, for me, simply gone together. The book you’re holding is a product of these combined gluttonies. Dwight Garner, the beloved New York Times critic and the author of Garner’s Quotations, serves up the intertwined pleasures of books and food. The product of a lifetime of obsessively reading, eating, and every combination therein, The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading is a charming, emotional memoir, one that only Garner could write. In it, he records the voices of great writers and the stories from his life that fill his mind as he moves through the sections of the day and of this book: breakfast, lunch, shopping, the occasional nap, drinking, and dinner. Through his lifelong infatuation with these twin joys, we meet the man behind the pages and the plates, and a portrait of Garner, eager and insatiable, emerges. He writes with tenderness and humor about his mayonnaise-laden childhood in West Virginia and Naples, Florida (and about his father’s famous peanut butter and pickle sandwich), his mind-opening marriage to a chef from a foodie family (“Cree grew up taking leftover frog legs to school in her lunch box”), and the words and dishes closest to his heart. This is a book to be savored, though it may just whet your appetite for more.

Fifty Playwrights on their Craft

Author : Caroline Jester
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1474239048
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Fifty Playwrights on their Craft by : Caroline Jester

Download or read book Fifty Playwrights on their Craft written by Caroline Jester and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a series of interviews with fifty playwrights from the US and UK, this book offers a fascinating study of the voices, thoughts, and opinions of today's most important dramatists. Filled with probing questions, Fifty Playwrights on their Craft explores ideas such as how does playwriting help a global dialogue; where do dramatists find the ideas that become the stories and narratives within their plays; how can the stage inform the writer's creative process; how does crossing boundaries between art forms push the living art form of theatre-making forward; and will there be playwrights in another 50 years? Through these interrogating interviews we come to understand how and why playwrights write what they do and gain insight into their processes and motivations. Together, the interviews provide an inter-generational dialogue between dramatists whose work spans over six decades. Featuring interviews with playwrights such as Edward Bond, Katori Hall, Chris Goode, David Greig, Willy Russell, David Henry Hwang, Alecky Blythe, Anne Washburn and Simon Stephens, Jester and Svich offer an unprecedented view into the multiple perspectives and approaches of key playwrights on both sides of the Atlantic.

What Was Neoliberalism?

Author : Neil Davidson
Publisher : Haymarket Books
ISBN 13 : 1642599425
Total Pages : 171 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (425 download)

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Book Synopsis What Was Neoliberalism? by : Neil Davidson

Download or read book What Was Neoliberalism? written by Neil Davidson and published by Haymarket Books. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eminent scholar-activist Neil Davidson’s brilliance is on full display in this posthumous work, a timely and prescient introduction to the neoliberal era. While it is widely agreed that neoliberalism arose in the wake of the global economic crisis of the 1970s, there remains much debate about how to understand its significance and even how to define it. Is it best seen as an ideology of free market fundamentalism, a series of policy decisions gutting the public sector and breaking unions, or as an era of capitalist development with its own logic Bringing his considerable intellectual breadth and characteristic generosity to bear on this question, Neil Davidson shows that to truly appreciate what is unique about neoliberalism, and what marks it out as a continuation of capitalism more generally, it is necessary to examine its social dimensions. What Was Neoliberalism? holds fast to Davidson’s conviction that thoroughly understanding the past means being better prepared for the struggles of the future.

Marginal Comment

Author : K. J. Dover
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 135029585X
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Marginal Comment by : K. J. Dover

Download or read book Marginal Comment written by K. J. Dover and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-03-09 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marginal Comment, which attracted keen and widespread interest on its original publication in 1994, is the remarkable memoir of one of the most distinguished classical scholars of the modern era. Its author, Sir Kenneth Dover, whose academic publications included the pathbreaking book Greek Homosexuality (1978, reissued by Bloomsbury in 2016), conceived of it as an 'experimental' autobiography – ruthlessly candid in retracing the full range of the author's experiences, both private and public, and unflinching in its attempt to analyse the entanglements between the life of the mind and the life of the body. Dover's distinguished career involved not only an influential series of writings about the ancient Greeks but also a number of prominent positions of leadership, including the presidencies of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and the British Academy. It was in those positions that he became involved in several high-profile controversies, including the blocking of an honorary degree for Margaret Thatcher from Oxford University, and a bitter debate in the British Academy over the fellowship of Anthony Blunt after his exposure as a former Soviet spy. This edition of Marginal Comment is much more than a reissue: it includes an introduction which frames the book in relation to its author's life and work, as well as annotations based in part on materials originally excluded by Dover but left in his personal papers on this death. Now newly available, the memoir provides not only the self-portrait of an exceptional individual but a rich case-study in the intersections between an intellectual life and its social contexts.

The Knitter

Author : John Mallaghan
Publisher : AuthorHouse
ISBN 13 : 1449077641
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (49 download)

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Book Synopsis The Knitter by : John Mallaghan

Download or read book The Knitter written by John Mallaghan and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2009-12-29 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It was as if the wool had become all of the strands of his life, and those lifelines, not amounting to much but full of potential, were forming into something much more worthwhile, and much more beautiful, after they had been given a new form with the knitting needles." Inspired by the poems written by his coal miner father, and taking its name and theme from one of them, “The Knitter” is a celebration of one man’s wisdom, talent and influence. The book should be considered a “fictionalised” memoir – some parts are literally true, some are a close cousin of real events and some have been imagined from stories told, or from the poems written by the author's father. In trying to remain true to the spirit and feeling of what it describes rather than the bare facts, The Knitter succeeds in getting closer to some real and more lasting truths than many biographies manage to achieve. It shows us the importance of the people around us in helping make sense of our lives and how we can all make a real, lasting difference. It is in the connected strands running through the book that “The Knitter” becomes so much more than the sum of its parts. Funny, sad and wise, the book works as a collection of short stories. However, it’s real impact lies in being a memoir that may just leave you wanting to be a better person for having read it. Find out more about The Knitter, and the poems that inspired it, at www.theknitterbook.com

Life

Author : Keith Richards
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316178721
Total Pages : 474 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (161 download)

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Book Synopsis Life by : Keith Richards

Download or read book Life written by Keith Richards and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2010-11-12 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-awaited autobiography of Keith Richards, guitarist, songwriter, singer, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. With The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the songs that roused the world, and he lived the original rock and roll life. Now, at last, the man himself tells his story of life in the crossfire hurricane. Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records, learning guitar and forming a band with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones's first fame and the notorious drug busts that led to his enduring image as an outlaw folk hero. Creating immortal riffs like the ones in "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Honky Tonk Women." His relationship with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France, wildfire tours of the U.S., isolation and addiction. Falling in love with Patti Hansen. Estrangement from Jagger and subsequent reconciliation. Marriage, family, solo albums and Xpensive Winos, and the road that goes on forever. With his trademark disarming honesty, Keith Richard brings us the story of a life we have all longed to know more of, unfettered, fearless, and true.

No Touch Monkey!

Author : Ayun Halliday
Publisher : Seal Press
ISBN 13 : 1580056024
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis No Touch Monkey! by : Ayun Halliday

Download or read book No Touch Monkey! written by Ayun Halliday and published by Seal Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zine queen Ayun Halliday confesses the best-and worst-of her globetrotting misadventures. "I laughed hard on nearly every page of this shockingly intimate memoir and deeply funny book." -- Stephen Colbert Ayun Halliday may not make for the most sensible travel companion, but she is certainly one of the zaniest, with a knack for inserting herself (and her unwitting cohorts) into bizarre situations around the globe. Curator of kitsch and unabashed aficionada of pop culture, Halliday offers bemused, self-deprecating narration of events from guerrilla theater in Romania to drug-induced Apocalypse Now reenactments in Vietnam to a perhaps more surreal collagen-implant demonstration at a Paris fashion show emceed by Lauren Bacall. On layover in Amsterdam, Halliday finds unlikely trouble in the red-light district -- eliciting the ire of a tiny, violent madam, and is forced to explain tampons to soldiers in Kashmir -- "they're for ladies. Bleeding ladies" -- that, she admits, "might have looked like white cotton bullets lined up in their box." A self-admittedly bumbling vacationer, Halliday shares -- with razor-sharp wit and to hilarious effect -- the travel stories most are too self-conscious to tell. Includes line drawings, generously provided by the author.

Rock Paper Scissors

Author : Alice Feeney
Publisher : Flatiron Books
ISBN 13 : 1250266114
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Rock Paper Scissors by : Alice Feeney

Download or read book Rock Paper Scissors written by Alice Feeney and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Feeney lives up to her reputation as the “queen of the twist”...This page-turner will keep you guessing.” —Real Simple Think you know the person you married? Think again... Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognize friends or family, or even his own wife. Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts--paper, cotton, pottery, tin--and each year Adam’s wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn’t randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn’t want them to live happily ever after. Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget. Rock Paper Scissors is the latest exciting domestic thriller from the queen of the killer twist, New York Times bestselling author Alice Feeney.

Touch

Author : Courtney Maum
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0735212120
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (352 download)

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Book Synopsis Touch by : Courtney Maum

Download or read book Touch written by Courtney Maum and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sloane Jacobsen is the most powerful trend forecaster in the world ... and global fashion, lifestyle, and tech companies pay to hear her opinions about the future. Her recent forecasts on the family are unwavering: the world is overpopulated, and with unemployment, college costs, and food prices all on the rise, having children is an extravagant indulgence. So it's no surprise when the tech giant Mammoth hires Sloane to lead their groundbreaking annual conference, celebrating the voluntarily childless. But not far into her contract, Sloane begins to sense the undeniable signs of a movement against electronics that will see people embracing compassion, empathy, and 'in-personism' again"--

Colin Sumner

Author : David Moxon
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030369412
Total Pages : 159 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (33 download)

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Book Synopsis Colin Sumner by : David Moxon

Download or read book Colin Sumner written by David Moxon and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-28 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the work of criminologist Colin Sumner. It re-presents his arguments and ideas on Marxism, ideology, censure, deviance, crime, underdevelopment, social control and the media; situating them in their wider social context. Moxon argues that Sumner should be restored within the criminology discipline as a pioneer who has produced works of great theoretical sophistication and insight. By systematically considering Sumner’s entire output, the book shows how his thought involved a gradually deepening understanding of his core notion of ideological censure. His writing is also marked by a growing unease with the effects of late modern capitalism and the quagmire of censoriousness rife in the 21st century. This book makes clear that Sumner’s work was remarkably prescient, and his ideas may help up to make sense of complicated times.

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

Author : Sarah Vowell
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101624019
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by : Sarah Vowell

Download or read book Lafayette in the Somewhat United States written by Sarah Vowell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Assassination Vacation and The Partly Cloudy Patriot, an insightful and unconventional account of George Washington’s trusted officer and friend, that swashbuckling teenage French aristocrat the Marquis de Lafayette. 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.