FOR LIBERTY AND GLORY: Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions
By James R. Gaines
W. W. Norton
Publication date: September 6, 2007
Contact: Angela Hayes, 212-446-5104

The relationship between France and the United States has always been contentious. In addition to being the leaders of their respective revolutions, Washington and Lafayette were very much the founding fathers of this quarrelsome alliance. Far from the enduring "childless-father/fatherless-child" myth, the two men often worked in secret and at cross-purposes, divided by their different patriotic loyalties. Today France and America still engage in frequent diplomatic tugs of war, and the question of how this came to be is an important one. In FOR LIBERTY AND GLORY, Gaines delivers a profoundly revisionist retelling of both the American and French Revolutions that treats them, for the first time, as a single, simultaneous narrative. Drawing on primary sources, including diplomatic correspondence of America's revolutionary "secret committee," Gaines teases out the many transatlantic congruencies between these two wars--everything from the days these revolutions began to the days that their kings--or presidents--were installed into power.

Most palpably, the book is the story of two men who could not have been less alike, an ebullient rich aristocrat and a battle-toughened frontiersman, but who had a common destiny set out before them: As subjects in a monarchy, each was destined for the life of a courtier. In order to change that, they had to change themselves. On sale on the 250th anniversary of Lafayette's birth, FOR LIBERTY AND GLORY is a sweeping story of two revolutions that changed everything that came after. Gaines is the former chief editor of Time, Life, and People magazines. He lives in Paris, France, and will embark on a U.S. tour to promote the book this fall.