@article{305167,
      recid = {305167},
      author = {Schiff, Stacy.},
      title = {A great improvisation : Franklin, France, and the birth of  America /},
      publisher = {Henry Holt,},
      address = {New York  :},
      pages = {xvii, 489 p. :},
      year = {2005},
      abstract = {Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Schiff tells how  Benjamin Franklin--seventy years old, without any  diplomatic training, and possessed of the most rudimentary  French--convinced France, an absolute monarchy, to  underwrite America's experiment in democracy. When Franklin  stepped onto French soil, he well understood he was  embarking on the greatest gamble of his career. By virtue  of fame, charisma, and ingenuity, he outmaneuvered British  spies, French informers, and hostile colleagues; engineered  the Franco-American alliance of 1778; and helped to  negotiate the peace of 1783. From these pages emerge a  particularly human and yet fiercely determined Founding  Father, as well as a profound sense of how fragile,  improvisational, and international was our country's bid  for independence.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/305167},
}