Stacy Schiff
All Books By Stacy Schiff
A Great Improvisation
- By: Stacy Schiff
- Narrator: Jason Culp
- Length: 9 hours 50 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2005
- Language: English
“In December 1776, a small boat delivered an old man to France.” So begins a dazzling narrative account of Benjamin Franklin’s French mission, the most exacting–and momentous–eight years of his life.
When Franklin embarked, the colonies were without money, munitions, gunpowder or common cause; like all adolescents, they were to discover that there was a difference between declaring independence and achieving it. To close that gap Franklin was dispatched to Paris, amid great secrecy, across a winter sea thick with enemy cruisers. He was seventy years old, without any diplomatic training, and possessed of the most rudimentary French. He was also among the most famous men in the world.
Franklin well understood that he was off on the greatest gamble of his career. But despite minimal direction from Congress he was soon outwitting the British secret service and stirring passion for a republic in an absolute monarchy.
In A Great Improvisation Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff offers an utterly fresh and thrilling account of Franklin’s Parisian adventure and of America’s debut on the world stage. Schiff weaves her tale of international intrigue from new and little-known primary sources, working from a host of diplomatic archives, family papers, and intelligence reports. From her pages emerges a particularly human Founding Father, as well as a vivid sense of how fragile, improvisational, and international was our country’ s bid for independence.
... Read moreA Great Improvisation
- By: Stacy Schiff
- Narrator: Susan Denaker
- Length: 21 hours 54 minutes
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
- Publish date: January 01, 2005
- Language: English
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3.91(1171 ratings)
“In December 1776, a small boat delivered an old man to France.” So begins a dazzling narrative account of Benjamin Franklin’s French mission, the most exacting—and momentous—eight years of his life.
When Franklin embarked, the colonies were without money, munitions, gunpowder, or common cause; like all adolescents, they were to discover that there was a difference between declaring independence and achieving it. To close that gap Franklin was dispatched to Paris, amid great secrecy, across a winter sea thick with enemy cruisers. He was 70 years old, without any diplomatic training, and possessed of the most rudimentary French. He was also among the most famous men in the world.
Franklin well understood that he was off on the greatest gamble of his career. But despite minimal direction from Congress he was soon outwitting the British secret service and stirring passion for a republic in an absolute monarchy.
In A Great Improvisation Pulitzer Prize winner Stacy Schiff offers an utterly fresh and thrilling account of Franklin’s Parisian adventure and of America’s debut on the world stage. Schiff weaves her tale of international intrigue from new and little-known primary sources, working from a host of diplomatic archives, family papers, and intelligence reports. From her pages emerges a particularly human Founding Father, as well as a vivid sense of how fragile, improvisational, and international was our country’ s bid for independence.
... Read moreThe Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
- By: Stacy Schiff
- Narrator: Jason Culp
- Length: 14 hours 14 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: October 25, 2022
- Language: English
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3.99(1089 ratings)
Thomas Jefferson once asserted that “for depth of purpose, zeal, and sagacity, no man in Congress exceeded, if any equaled, Sam Adams.” John Adams called him “the most elegant writer, the most sagacious politician, and celebrated patriot perhaps of all.” But in spite of his celebrated status among America’s founding fathers as a revolutionary leader, Samuel Adams’ life and achievements have been largely overshadowed in the history books.
Now, in The Revolutionary Samuel Adams, Stacy Schiff brings her masterful skill as historian and storyteller to the life of Samuel Adams, examining his transformation from the listless, failing son of a wealthy family into the tireless, silver-tongued revolutionary who rallied the likes of John Hancock and John Adams behind him. Gripping and revelatory, this book is a long-overdue chapter in the history of the American Revolution.
The Witches
- By: Stacy Schiff
- Narrator: Eliza Foss
- Length: 18 hours 16 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: October 27, 2015
- Language: English
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3.24(13576 ratings)
It began in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister’s daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death.
The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history. In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic.
As psychologically thrilling as it is historically seminal, The Witches is Stacy Schiff’s account of this fantastical story — the first great American mystery unveiled fully for the first time by one of our most acclaimed historians.
Vera
- By: Stacy Schiff
- Narrator: Anna Fields
- Length: 18 hours 13 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
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3.86(941 ratings)
Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and hailed by critics as both “monumental” (Boston Globe) and “utterly romantic” (New York magazine), Stacy Schiff’s V+(r)ra, the story of Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov, brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time. Vladimir Nabokov–the +(r)migr+(r) author of Lolita, Pale Fire, and Speak, Memory–wrote his books first for himself, second for his wifeV+(r)ra, and third for no one at all.
Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the twentieth century, the story of the Nabokov’s fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. V+(r)ra, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine–a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Stacy Schiff’s V+(r)ra is a triumph of the biographical form.
... Read more