Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell
270 pages
Published 2015
Read from January 9 to January 10
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
Scholarship for the internet age, Lafayette is written in full-on snark mode, breezily quipping through the life and legacy of the Marquis de Lafayette, Revolutionary War hero, as if a smart-alecky news blog column escaped its confines and skipped along for almost three hundred pages. Which makes for a tremendously entertaining but not especially informative or analytical book. But the Revolutionary War, by some accident of omission (and later apathy on my part), has been one of the gaps in my understanding of history, and I had long desired a relatively unbiased treatment of the period, so even the superficial sketch given here was a welcome addition to my knowledge base. The character of Lafayette himself was especially intriguing, given that beforehand I had known scarcely more than his name and his nationality.
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