The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered

This book is not a detailed account of Lafayette’s place in the American Revolution. Auricchio spends just over fifty pages from the time Lafayette lands in America to the surrender at Yorktown. For example, details about Lafayette’s critically important work in fighting Cornwallis in the south that led to cornering Cornwallis in Yorktown are not here. This may sound like a criticism of the book. It is not. It depends what you are looking for in a book on Lafayette. Lafayette was a teenager when he started helping America and still very young when the Revolution ended. The purpose of this book is giving a full account of Lafayette’s life. And, while the ideals of the American Revolution continued to play a critical role for Lafayette, the actual fighting took up a very small part of his life. This book is a superb biography of all of Lafayette’s life. His role in the Revolution was for him only the beginning of a journey through the changes not just in America but primarily in his native country.The heart of this book is a riveting retelling of the French Revolution through the eyes of someone who was deeply involved in it. Lafayette was a leader of the moderates at a time in France when moderates had no chance. Leaders of the radicals and a dense and less than astute king made what Lafayette tried to do an impossibility. At one point Lafayette was the unqualified hero of the revolution in France but ends up in an Austrian prison for four years. Here Auricchio supplies lots of detail and the writing is extremely strong. She deftly weaves details of the Revolution into what Lafayette was doing. This is not easy for an extremely complicated scenario but Auricchio does it very well. She gives many examples of how Jefferson and Governeur Morris in France interacted with Lafayette and what they thought was happening. Auricchio makes a strong case that Lafayette was an authentic and deeply optimistic person throughout his life whose very virtues often kept him from seeing what to others was obvious. I got a real understanding of Lafayette’s personality.I highly recommend this book. If you are looking for a gripping and lucid retelling of the life of this most unusual man, you cannot do better.

I really enjoyed this book. It's well-written and an accessible read, but at the same time it's detailed and well-researched. I really enjoyed learning about "The Hero of Two Worlds" and his roles in both the American and French Revolutions. All I knew about Lafayette before this was that there are a million parks named after him, but he is so much more than that, and this book shows him for all the good and with the flaws, too.

Was a good book about a person that most Americans don't pay any attention to after his role in the American Revolution. While the A. R. was a major event in his life, it was certainly not the only event of significance for Lafayette. His attempts at moderation throughout the French Revolution were the main reason that he is still looked on favorably in the US and not in France. A good read to find out more about a figure of our Revolution.

I'm a big fan of early American history. Over the years, I've read much about Lafayette though most of it circumstantial. Being raised in Vermont and having attended UVM, I took many classes in Lafayette Hall and often walked around his statue on the commons. Lake Champlain, Vergennes, Montpelier, the French influence abounds. Based on a strong recommendation from a Yale professor, I ordered a copy of this biography. It was a most fortunate decision. Others below provide very thorough analysis of the book so I won't rehash. My opinions - Scholarship - excellent. Prose - excellent. Sense of Lafayette's humanity - excellent. In the end, I was left with a sense that Lafayette was less of a "great" man than I had believed but he was a much "better" man than I'd ever expected - if that makes sense. Since reading this volume, I have gifted two copies and both readers shared my enthusiasm. Congratulations, Professor Auricchio, you've earned a spot on my A list.

I absolutely loved this book. It is interesting, accurate, and I didn’t want to put it down. The author did an excellent job with this biography. The way she was able to use words to describe the time period and Lafayette’s character as well as that of his friends and enemies was extremely entertaining and mesmerizing (read the book and you’ll see what I did there 😉).

I'd read Unger's bio and also Sarah Vowell's "Lafayette and the Somewhat United States". You always worry that you'll just get the same details and angles in other bios, but "Lafayette Reconsidered" really focuses on how Lafayette's life experience and pure childlike confidence in enlightenment principles moved world events in ways they might not have without him. This bio also has one of the most concise and clear blow by blow of the French Revolution -almost as if it's a narrated news story. Laura Auricchio is a thoughtful and clear writer, somewhat of a rarity among biographers.

I liked this book a lot. It was fairly tedious but I knew that when I ordered it. If you are a history buff and you like the history of the French Revolution then you'll like this book.

The author frames her narrative with two visits: one to Versailles where she has Houdon's bust of Lafayette rescued from a closet and the other at Pere lachaise where she honors the courage and fortitude of his wife Adrienne. Wonderful account of la grange, his country estate, and a fascinating psychologically adept account of the red haired Lafayette's life. Enjoyed every page.

I enjoyed this book. The life of Lafayette evidently had all the ups and downs necessary to make an excellent story. Immensely rich, a determined individual which a knack of making friends (most notably George Washington, a modern ‘Cincinnatus’ whom he wanted to emulate) he invested himself and his means in the American Revolution, and then, caught between two fires, unsuccessfully finding a middle way in the French one. He ended up losing his money and having his possessions confiscated, and his American friends were too wary to save him despite what he had done for them. They did eventually send him money so that he could survive Austrian prison a little more comfortably, and they helped save his wife from the guillotine. The story of Lafayette’s wife voluntarily leaving France to join him in prison moved many. There are several interesting dimensions to this biography, not the least of which is a personal Franco-American relationship, something that is always bound to have its strains. The book emphasises the fame which seemed to come naturally to Lafayette in America, without labouring on his military exploits. In 1784, having returned from France, he undertook a perilous expedition in a gummed taffeta coat sent from France wrapped in newspaper that had remained stuck to the gum. There is the marvellous description of a recovering Manhattan, several years after the British had left. Lafayette’s role at the beginning of the French Revolution is explained in graphic detail. His zenith came one year after the fall of the Bastille, at the Festival of Liberty in July 1790, but he was being undermined by a campaign of pornographic depictions and was hurt by his decision to be ruthless against insurrection at Nancy, and an incident in the Champ de Mars a year later. My only beef is that the book hardly talks about Lafayette’s political struggles after the return of the Bourbons, for example during the unrest in Paris during the debates over the law of double vote in 1820 proposed by the reactionaries. He was one of the leaders of the liberal group in parliament, people referred to him, government spies watched, and it formed yet another of his uphill struggles worth recounting.