Franklin in Paris: The Great Improvisation with Stacy Schiff

Stacy Schiff, best-selling and Pulitzer-prize winning author, joins us to talk about the extraordinary story of Benjamin Franklin in Paris, which she has recounted in her A Great Improvisation:  Franklin, France, and the Birth of America.  Franklin was doing more in Paris than simply negotiating--he was establishing the United States as a nation worthy of recognition on the world stage, and he became for France the model of American.   We hear about his relationships with Madame Helvetius and Madame Brillon, with the French court, and with fellow-American diplomats like John Adams (who hated Franklin), and with his estranged son Wiilliam.  A Shakespearean story,  told in extraordinarily well. 

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