Real People/Real Stories: A Nonfiction Book Group (WL)

Real People/Real Stories meets the third Thursday of each month to explore the best in nonfiction history, biography, science, nature, and the arts. This month’s title is Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution by Mike Duncan

This fine biography reveals the remarkable life of Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, better known as the Marquis de Lafayette. Born into wealth as a French aristocrat, he fought in both the American and the French revolutions. Active as a soldier, statesman, idealist, philanthropist, and abolitionist, from the time of Louis XVI, through the Napoleonic era, to the overthrow of the Bourbon Dynasty in the revolution of 1830, his life was one of unparalleled adventure.

“Mike Duncan has dug deep into the world of revolutions, and the richness of detail in this book is beguiling. But Mike’s superpower is his storytelling skill. Hero Of Two Worlds hooks you from page one with humor, a sly perspective and a page turning narrative drive worthy of a life like Lafayette’s.”―Rian Johnson, award-winning filmmaker

“Hero of Two Worlds is biography and narrative at its best, an informative page-turner crafted by a master of historical storytelling.”―Patrick Wyman, creator of Tides of History and author of The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World

“Mike Duncan’s excellent, well-researched book portrays Lafayette’s extraordinary life as a fascinating, transatlantic drama with three great revolutions and transitional interludes that carry the reader through seven explosive decades of historical change. The hero of this drama plays starring public roles in the American Revolution and the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1830. But Duncan weaves the people, conflicts, and legacies of these vast public events into stories about a personal life that was always entangled with complex family networks and multi-generational friendships as well as a loving marriage and emotionally-charged relationships with other women.”―Lloyd Kramer, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and author of Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions