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For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions

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We all know the story of the Marquis de Lafayette and his participation in the American Revolution, at least in outline. Washington had been overwhelmed by the foreign, mostly French, mercenaries who appeared at his headquarters, all offering to lead the army in his stead in return for a fortune and all of the credit for any victories. In walks a teenager, very wealthy, a bit awkward, but very willing to spend money for the cause, and insistent that he be allowed to serve in whatever capacity he's needed. The childless Washington and the fatherless Lafayette become surrogates for one another, and lead the Continental Army to victory.

James R. Gaines has a somewhat different, more nuanced appreciation of the friendship between the two men which was so crucial to the formation of the revolutions of their respective countries. This book, which follows the two men's friendship and the two revolutions they tried to lead, is very well-thought-out, and the result is an interesting, intelligent discussion of their relationship and the facets of it that reflected into the history of first our country and then France. The book is structured as a dual biography in part, and a dual history in part also, which makes it a bit confusing, but Gaines is a good writer and knows how to knit a story together, so the narrative moves along well and is interesting.

Washington comes across as the founding father we all know and love, even if we don't at this remove quite understand him any more (if anyone ever did). He's stiff, almost emotionless at times, and seemingly distant from those around him save a few intimates, but he's also supremely, almost inhumanly concerned with the welfare of his country above everything else, and willing to sacrifice everything he has personally to preserve that. Lafayette, however, emerges as more than a child who was ardently an advocate of freedom. At times, it has appeared that he was more of an adventurer than any sort of patriot or ideologue, but Gaines makes it clear that ideology was the main driving force of his actions, and that the views he expressed when he purchased a ship, filled it with goods he had also bought, and then sailed it to America, were the same ideals that he espoused 50+ years later when he visited America for the last time, and he held them throughout the period in between, never deviating from them. His devotion to Washington, as a result, winds up being more nuanced than just a search for a father-figure: he actually revered his politics, his reserve, his dignity, his self-control, and his desire to see democratic government preserved in the United States.

I enjoyed this book a great deal. I'd never heard of Mr. Gaines before, but this book is one of the better ones on the American Revolution that I've read in recent years, and it's very well done. I would recommend it to anyone even slightly interested in the subject.

James Gaines has posted quite an accomplishment with this book. Artfully he assembles a mountain of research and weaves the best pieces into a cohesive whole. You will learn fascinating things about America's founders,and also about the various factions and personalities of the French Revolution.

I thought that Lafayette stole the show. Washington was willing to risk all to bring liberty and stability to a new nation, and won. Lafayette was equally willing to risk all to bring liberty and stability to an old nation, after having already helped bring those blessings to us. Since his task was impossible, he lost. Nevertheless, his idealism and sense of duty allowed him to keep his honor.
It is rare that a work of history will engage your emotions the way this one does. Just remember, it is scholarly, lengthy, and demanding. But worth it. James Gaines is the former editor of Time magazine.

This interesting and challenging book closely inspects the parallel and intertwined fights for liberty that occurred in America and France during the last quarter of the 18th century. It is a very telling book describing the similar challenges faced by each as their revolutions respectively unfolded. It focuses on France's obvious contributions to American Independence, men money and material, and on America's necessary avoidance of the serial French upheaval that never seemed to quite achieve final resolution as internal warring factions murdered more French citizens than all of the casualties experienced by America, England and France combined in the US.

The author does a very good job detailing how each revolution developed its own path to completion. I was stunned to find that the French loans to America that financed our revolution so bankrupted the French Treasury that it was a prime contributor to the French Revolution. The author also does very good work describing the Federalist - Republican English and French polarization that occurred as the US sought different governmental models to negotiate the uncharted waters of self government, explains thoroughly the decided break with France after the XYZ affair and explains successive French governments disenchantment with the US as both nations moved into the 19th century. It is here that the fundamental difference between these two movements comes to the fore with the US focus remaining continental, and for the most part avoiding foreign entanglements, while France continues with the 15th, 16th and 17th century external model of European wars focused on global conquest.

The author bit off a lot here and I am thankful that he did. As a result of his significant efforts, I materially better understand the interplay between France and America for the 50 years following 1776. But in all honesty I found this book very difficult to work my way through, and in the process of doing so, found the book's structure an impediment to its effectiveness as a teaching tool: It is cumbersome. Make no mistake, this is a good work but at times it labors to make its points and provides far too much extraneous detail, unnecessary to its central theme, for it to flow smoothly. That said, just skim those parts and you have a winner.

This is excellent history demonstrating the friendship of George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette as well as the connections between the American and French Revolutions.

Gaines shows us how much the French Revolution was a result--primarily economic--of the American and the book flows from one to the other across the Atlantic with great ease replete with nobles and scoundrels along the way.

But it is the character of Lafayette which is drawn so beautifully and heartfelt. For those who know much about Washington but less about Lafayette, I cannot recommend this story highly enough. Touching at times, poignant, it is not only informative but is indeed a joy to read.

Stunning and penetrating look at the lives of Washington and Lafayette. Traces the sources, parallels, and divergent paths of the American and French Revolutions. Very well researched. A must for anyone interested in these world altering revolutions. Lafayette, steeped in friendship and battle with George Washington, returns to France and plays a seminal role in initiating the French Revolution.

James R. Gaines takes us through the American and French Revolutions by showing us the roles Washington, Lafayette and their friendship played in both. We get to see how the struggles between Great Britain and France led them to use the American Revolution as another theater to fight for dominance. There is no doubt that American Independence benefitted from French support against the British, but it also benefitted by the British focusing more on France and not understanding the nature of the stakes they were fighting for in suppressing the American Rebellion until they had lost the colonies.

While I had known the name of Lafayette and had some notions about his contributions to the Revolutionary War, I had no idea how young he was (19) and how wealthy he was when he joined himself to George Washington as a junior officer. One of this book's many virtues is his treatment of how men such as Washington and Lafayette viewed their world and their place in it. The discussion of Liberty, Duty, Glory, and Honor is quite good and helps us understand the way these men lived their lives and the choices they made. Washington's character and steady hand in guiding the new government in difficult times can be seen clearly. Lafayette's great struggles in trying to gain a Constitutional Monarchy and his (and his family's) terrible suffering at the hands of various extreme revolutionists remains shocking after nearly 200 years. You will find his story compelling if you don't know it and I suspect you will learn things from Gaine's telling even if you already know of his imprisonment and loss of all his wealth and property as well as the terrible sufferings of his wife.

While the story uses these two men and their friendship as its supporting structure, another virtue of the book is its fabulous list of other people and their contributions to both Revolutions - for good and ill. Some are familiar to me, but others I had not heard of and Gaines tells his history so well, that I learned more about every person I read about. Frankly, the book has so much to offer that I had to take my time reading it. There are so many riches that it takes time to absorb. The connections between the Revolutions, the attempts to draw America into a war with France after the Revolution, and the French seditionists were all made clearer to me.

The book has a number of black and white and color illustrations of the key people and events. They help the reader see much of what is being discussed.

Excellent! I recommend it for everyone and if you want to understand this aspect of our history, I believe it is a must read.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

This book is a great exploration of the rivalry between Britain and France.

That Sweet Enemy: Britain and France: The History of a Love-Hate Relationship (Vintage)

The Marquis de Lafayette seems to be enjoying a resurgence of popularity, with two new books on him and an exhibit at the New York Historical Society in 2007-8 dedicated to his (massively popular) tour of America in 1824-5. Considering that I have loved Lafayette since we learned about him in middle school American history, I am happy for this new-found enthusiasm. And Lafayette deserves the attention. He is the "Hero of Two Worlds" who, despite his birth into a wealthy and prestigious French family, believed in the ideals of the American Revolution and fought in the Continental Army without pay. After that revolution ended he tried to make his home country a better place, but his moderate position (he advocated a constitutional monarchy) was ultimately at odds with the bloody, radical affair that the French Revolution became.

One of the aspects that interests many Americans about Lafayette is his close relationship with George Washington. Although Gaines shies away from the traditional view of Lafayette and Washington's relationship as that of a surrogate father and son, he does show their close friendship and the deep respect they both had for each other.

Gaines' book is a highly readable, insightful and incredibly interesting look at the American and French Revolutions through the lives of Washington and Lafayette. He traces both countries through the time period, so the reader gets a good view of both Old Regime France and post-revolutionary America and thus has a better understanding of how events in one country influenced decisions in another. Gaines also introduces a fascinating cast of characters that were involved in the events, including the other Founding Fathers, the resourceful playwright Beaumarchais (who wrote the plays Marriage of Figaro and Barber of Seville), and the cross-dressing French spy, the Cheavlier d'Eon. Gaines' portrayal of his two main protagonists, Washington and Lafayette, gives the reader a good feel for what they were like and will likely leave the reader very impressed with both. FOR LIBERTY AND GLORY is a perfect read for anyone interested in Washington, Lafayette, the revolutions they fought in and the formation of America after the revolution ended.

This book is a classic. It shows the parallel events and the overlap of the American and French revolutions. Lafayette was in the middle of both.A very very interesting person, a hero in fact. The part he played in the French revolution has probably in most case been under represented, not that I am an expert on it.This is a great, great, great, book.I should read it again.

This is an excellent book. While this book does provide a lot of biographical information, particularly about Lafayette, it is primarily about the impact of George Washington and the Marques de Lafayette on the American and French revolutions. It is very well written and I feel provides a lot of insight into the nature of the American and French revolutions and the people who led them. The American Revolution and Washington part of the story is well known to American readers, but the French and Lafayette part is generally much less well known. This book does its bit to rectify this deficiency. Books that discuss the American Revolutionary war discuss Lafayette, but generally not in great detail. This book presents more details, but it is not a military history per se. Likewise, most books on the French Revolution discuss Lafayette, but again he tends to only be a minor character in the story. This book discusses his involvement in greater detail. While I have read some general treatments of the French Revolution I had no idea of Lafayette's pivotal involvement, likewise I had almost no knowledge of his impact on later French history, particularly in the revolution of 1830 and his actions to install Louis-Phillippe King of France. I did not know that Lafayette was the author of the Rights of Man, the Head of the National Guard and the originator of the Tricolor emblem of the republic. Most of all, the book shows Lafayette as a man committed to the ideas of liberty and democracy. Fearless and steadfast throughout his life in the support of these ideals, he chose to defend them at great cost to himself and his family. His chose the most difficult middle ground, neither the defender of the rights of the monarchy (but willing to defend the King), nor a radical. Hence, at one time or another all sides hated him, but in the end he was vindicated by the French people and by history.

The book goes beyond Washington's presidency and discusses the struggles between those in the US who sided with the French versus those who believed that the English were a better economic and political model (but without a king). Furthermore, this book seeks to explain why the American and French revolutions took such different courses. Why one led to a stable government (although at the time its stability was open to question), while the other led to chaos, terror, war, an emperor, the return to the Bourbon monarchy, further bloodshed and then to several republics.

I recommend this book to those interested in history and to those who seek an understanding of why revolutions can sometimes go so wrong. My only complaint, and it is a small one, is that the pictures are printed on the same coarse paper as the text and are therefore not very clear.

Hardly any of us knows Washington and marquis de Lafayette in other than the romantic model of heroes of long, long ago. If one is willing to gaini a more cogent image of the men and their times, "For Liberty and Glory" is a good read. Gaines's research that backed this 400-plus-page treatment goes well beyond what one might consider the background a usual journalist might develop. It does. And the reader is rewarded by the writing style of an experienced journalist. But one is left with a problem of redesigning one's functional image of the times and the men--especially Washington and Lafayette. A great bonus is the attention Gaines gives to Lafayette back home in France in the frightening times of French revolutions.