Improbable Patriot
The Secret History of Monsieur de Beaumarchais, the French Playwright Who Saved the American Revolution
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Narrated by:
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Paul Boehmer
About this listen
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was an 18th-century French inventor, famed playwright, and upstart near-aristocrat in the court of King Louis XVI. In 1776, he conceived an audacious plan to send aid to the American rebels. What's more, he convinced the king to bankroll the project, and singlehandedly carried it out. By war's end, he had supplied Washington's army with most of its weapons and powder, though he was never paid or acknowledged by the United States.
To some, he was a dashing hero - a towering intellect who saved the American Revolution. To others, he was pure rogue - a double-dealing adventurer who stopped at nothing to advance his fame and fortune. In fact, he was both, and more: an advisor to kings, an arms dealer, and author of some of the most enduring works of the stage, including The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville.
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Critic reviews
"This delightful rogue of many talents set up a company to front for the French and Spanish regimes secretly supplying weapons, munitions, clothing and food to the struggling rebels." (American History)
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The story of Napoleon has been written many times. In some versions, he is a military genius, in others a war-obsessed tyrant. Here, historian Adam Zamoyski cuts through the mythology and explains Napoleon against the background of the European Enlightenment and what he was himself seeking to achieve. This most famous of men is also the most hidden of men, and Zamoyski dives deeper than any previous biographer to find him. Beautifully written, Napoleon brilliantly sets the man in his European context.
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Fascinating
- By Jean on 04-01-19
By: Adam Zamoyski
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The White King
- Charles I, Traitor, Murderer, Martyr
- By: Leanda de Lisle
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Less than 40 years after England's golden age under Elizabeth I, the country was at war with itself. Split between loyalty to the Crown or to Parliament, war raged on English soil. Its casualties were immense. At the head of the disintegrating kingdom was King Charles I. In this vivid portrait - informed by previously unseen manuscripts, including royal correspondence between the king and his queen - Leanda de Lisle depicts a man who was principled and brave but fatally blinkered.
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Enlightening Stuart history
- By Adeliese Baumann on 01-25-18
By: Leanda de Lisle
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Sicily
- An Island at the Crossroads of History
- By: John Julius Norwich
- Narrated by: Michael Healy
- Length: 14 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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"Sicily," said Goethe, "is the key to everything." It is the largest island in the Mediterranean, the stepping-stone between Europe and Africa, the link between the Latin West and the Greek East. Sicily's strategic location has tempted Roman emperors, French princes, and Spanish kings. The subsequent struggles to conquer and keep it have played crucial roles in the rise and fall of the world's most powerful dynasties.
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DISAPPOINTING
- By SRdto on 11-22-16
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Peter the Great
- His Life and World
- By: Robert K. Massie
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 43 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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This superbly told story brings to life one of the most remarkable rulers––and men––in all of history and conveys the drama of his life and world. The Russia of Peter's birth was very different from the Russia his energy, genius, and ruthlessness shaped. Crowned co-Tsar as a child of ten, after witnessing bloody uprisings in the streets of Moscow, he would grow up propelled by an unquenchable curiosity, everywhere looking, asking, tinkering, and learning, fired by Western ideas.
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Narrater ruins everything
- By BrendaLouQuilts on 12-30-11
By: Robert K. Massie
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War of Two
- Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Duel That Stunned the Nation
- By: John Sedgwick
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A provocative and penetrating investigation into the rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, whose infamous duel left the founding father dead and turned a sitting vice president into a fugitive. In the summer of 1804, two of America's most eminent statesmen squared off, pistols raised, on a bluff along the Hudson River. That two such men would risk not only their lives but the stability of the young country they helped forge is almost beyond comprehension. Yet we know that it happened.
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Provocative
- By Jean on 11-25-15
By: John Sedgwick
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Lion of Liberty
- Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation
- By: Harlow Giles Unger
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Known to generations of Americans for his stirring call to arms, “Give me liberty or give me death,” Patrick Henry is all but forgotten today as the first of the Founding Fathers to call for independence, the first to call for revolution, and the first to call for a bill of rights. If Washington was the “Sword of the Revolution” and Jefferson, “the Pen,” Patrick Henry more than earned his epithet as “the Trumpet” of the Revolution for rousing Americans to arms in the Revolutionary War.
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A Decent Book on an Amazing Character
- By David I. Williams on 05-13-13
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The Making of America: Volume 1
- Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln
- By: Teri Kanefield
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Unlike other biographies, the Making of America series goes beyond individual narratives linking influential figures to create an overarching story of America's growth that will deepen understanding of the country we live in today. This bundle featuring Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson tells the story of American constitutional history from the founding of the nation through the end of the Civil War.
By: Teri Kanefield
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Revolution Song
- A Story of American Freedom
- By: Russell Shorto
- Narrated by: Russell Shorto
- Length: 18 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of the acclaimed history The Island at the Center of the World, an intimate new epic of the American Revolution that reinforces its meaning for today. With America's founding principles being debated today as never before, Russell Shorto looks back to the era in which those principles were forged. Drawing on new sources, he weaves the lives of six people into a seamless narrative that casts fresh light on the range of experience in colonial America on the cusp of revolution.
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An inspiring book
- By Frank on 08-27-18
By: Russell Shorto
What listeners say about Improbable Patriot
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Andrew
- 09-20-23
A Concise Portrayal of the Beaumarchais
Until this book I was completely unaware of the man behind "Figaro" and "The Barber of Seville." Unger does an excellent job creating a familiarity with a Frenchman who should find himself standing with other great French supporters and Patriots during the American Revolution.
If you appreciate even the most remote aspects of the American founding, this book is well worth the listen/read.
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- DM
- 07-03-21
Amazing man! Life is better than Fiction
If this wasn't proven it would be so hard to believe actually happened to one man. Truely a Polymath! The American Revolutionary Government not only owes him a debt of gratitude but literally a debt they never paid him on. it's a shame, he is a true hero of the Revolution and deserves way more than the US has ever given him credit for.
Unbelievable story and maybe the most amazing thing is he escaped Paris with his live while living through "The Terror."
fascinating read, amazing man!
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- J. Wagener
- 01-21-22
How have I never heard of this before?!?
What an amazing life! This man had the kind of genius, luck, adventures, boldness, and cheek that is found maybe once in a hundred years. Throughout this book I kept thinking it would make for a great movie, but no one would find it believable. My only regret is that I wasn't reading a physical copy so I didn't get the foot notes.
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- S. Marshall Priddy
- 08-18-23
Total unexpected gem!
I first encountered the name Beaumarchais in a biography of Benjamin Franklin. I was intrigued because the film Amadeus talks about the court wanting to censor/suppress Mozart creating The Marriage of Figaro, but they never really explain why Figaro was controversial.
When I see two stories intersecting in my blind spot, I want to know more. So I found this book (to my good fortune free through subscription) and finished in a couple of days.
It is remarkable! This man is amazing and every part of this story defies belief (yet is clearly true by court records). It's an absolute roller coaster.
I learned a great deal and would highly recommend this work.
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- Sharon
- 07-27-19
It's not Unger's fault
It's all so improbable. Eighteenth century upper class madness. Kind of: Who cares? If you like gossip, this book is probably OK for you. Unger, though, is a fine researcher and writer. Just an icky choice of subject. And the narrator was certainly tolerable when played at 1.25x speed.
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1 person found this helpful