The Opposition…

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States

Sarah Vowell

Discussion: 2015-Jul-Aug-Sep

Why we're reading this: July 2, 2015
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2015-Jul-Aug-Sep

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* September 2015
By Tiffany , WristStrong · 1 post · 14 views

last updated Oct 01, 2015 01:15AM

* July 2015
By Tiffany , WristStrong · 1 post · 18 views

last updated Aug 04, 2015 11:47AM

What Members Thought

Aug 21, 2018 Jessica rated it it was ok

Shelves: audio-book

Mostly fine except for a couple peak clueless white lady bits. For example, Vowel gives a list of the slave rations at Montpellier as presented on the tour there (as an example by the tour guide of starvation rations) and then compares it to the food available at Valley Forge and suggests the soldiers might have preferred being slaves. That level of cluelessness is inexcusable.

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Jul 04, 2016 Virginia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history

As a big fan of Vowell's previous books, this one did not fail to disappoint. A particularly good read for over the 4th of July holiday, this one traces the actions and influence of the Marquis d'Lafayette, who as a teenager (19), snuck away from his well-to-do French family and pregnant wife to fight in Washington's Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

The book a good reminder of how the United States nearly weren't (at many points) due to both congressional bumbling and military error ...more

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Dec 08, 2015 Carolyn rated it really liked it

His full name was Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier and long before our French-bashing days of Freedom Fries, the Marquis de Lafayette was one of our first American superstars. At age 19 he defied his father-in-law and abandoned his wife and newborn child to sail the Atlantic and win glory fighting in the American Revolution (teenagers, amiright?). Although he was only given an honorary generalship as a way for American politicians to butter up the French aristocracy, he soon found a His full name was Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier and long before our French-bashing days of Freedom Fries, the Marquis de Lafayette was one of our first American superstars. At age 19 he defied his father-in-law and abandoned his wife and newborn child to sail the Atlantic and win glory fighting in the American Revolution (teenagers, amiright?). Although he was only given an honorary generalship as a way for American politicians to butter up the French aristocracy, he soon found a place for himself in George Washington’s army, leading battles and taking bullets.
This dude loved America, visiting the country he worked to free in 1824. He toured the only 24 states that existed at the time, delighting in the memorabilia with his likeness and partying like only an aging revolutionary could. Even from the beginning, he extolled the virtue of Americans, writing about our “simplicity of manners, a desire to oblige” and the “sweet equality…among everybody.” Which as author Sarah Vowell points out “in 1777, the kind of thing only a white guy could say.”
Cracks like that are a part of Vowell’s gift, an ability to demystify the long-dead revolutionaries we only know from regal marble sculptures and history books celebrating American exceptionalism. Vowell brings them back to earth, covering the doubts and petty jealousies that surrounded our Founding Fathers. She referred to them as “financially strapped terrorists,” sticklers about the whole “no taxation without representation” thing, but morally on board with hitting the French up for financial and military aid, raised by taxing French peasants into oblivion.
Vowell uses Lafayette as our ticket into the Revolution. Vowell tours that battles at White Plains and Yorktown, confronts Quakers’ complicated history with the battle of Brandywine, and most importantly, stops by the boyhood home of The Boss (hey, one of Springsteen’s relatives was a revolutionary soldier). But Vowell doesn’t keep this story in the past. Like most history, this affects the present too. The 2013 government shutdown threatened to ruin Vowell’s trips to Monticello and Yorktown, reminding her that “we the people haven’t agreed on much of anything.” She’s confronting our tendency to deify our Founders, and pointing out that discord has been embedded in America’s DNA since the start. Politicians conspired to fire General Washington, they argued bitterly about the place of slavery in this new land of the free and they didn’t even really like each other most of the time. Now the battles are about Obamacare and Planned Parenthood.
“After Dickinson and Adams had it out over the Olive Branch Petition, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, that he and Dickinson “are not to be on speaking terms.” How sad is it that this tiff sort of cheers me up? If two of the most distinguished, dedicated, and thoughtful public servants in the history of this republic could not find a way to agree to disagree, how can we expect the current crop of congressional blockheads to get along?”
This book could have veered off into the adorkable, with all of Vowell’s tangents. But she keeps this ship righted. Fans of her earlier work know what to expect. This isn’t a dry history book about what these dead white dudes did. It’s about the founding of our country, and what it means to us today. Vowell closes her book by listing all of the American places named after Lafayette, including the park across the street from the White House, where protesters have camped out for at least a century. Anti-war activists, Students for a Free Tibet, white supremacists and early suffragettes have all stood in the park named for this man who loved the potential of America’s burgeoning republic.
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Nov 24, 2016 Judy rated it really liked it

I am willing to read anything that Sarah Vowell writes and this examination of the impact the Marquis de Lafayette had on America is no exception. When 80,000 people in New York City (out of a total population of 120,000) turned out to welcome Lafayette to their city in 1824, it was apparent that he was not only a living symbol of the Revolutionary War but that he was also the embodiment of the dreams many Americans had for what they hoped their new nation could become. A wonderful book!

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