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Latest history chapbook details life of French general
By Sara Johansen 
Library Communications
Posted 10/17/2007
MADISON, Wis. – The latest volume in the America’s Founders history chapbook series, Lafayette: The Boy General, is a 116-page novella dedicated to the French-born general who rose to the top ranks during the Revolutionary War.
Well-connected in France, Lafayette served as an invaluable American advocate in France, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany both during and after the war. Through his efforts in these countries, alliances and commercial ties with the United States were forged and strengthened.
Lafayette led the movement for political reform in France, but soon the radical forces in the French Revolution proved too much for Lafayette to handle. Forced to flee his country, he was captured and imprisoned for five years by the Germans and Austrians until his release during a temporary truce in 1797. Lafayette’s visit to the United States in 1825–1826 as the “nation’s guest” stirred patriotic feelings in America. He died in 1834.
Lafayette: The Boy General is UW–Madison historian John Kaminski’s fourth installment in the Parallel Press history chapbook series, America’s Founders. Earlier books covered James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. The books have been serialized by the Capital Times.
Unlike traditional biographies, the America’s Founders series offers a behind-the-scenes look at the individuals who founded our country by emphasizing characteristics, and even the mannerisms, of the subjects as seen through the eyes of their contemporaries. Coming chapbooks will include: Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Patrick Henry, and John, Samuel, and Abigail Adams.
Kaminski is the founder and director of the Center of the American Constitution in the UW–Madison History Department. He is also the director of the multivolume Documentary History of the Ratifications of the Constitution, as well as the author or co-author of 15 other books on early U.S. history.
America's Founders is a chapbook series published by the Parallel Press in collaboration with the Center for the Study of the American Constitution. The series is published by the libraries under their imprint, the Parallel Press, an ongoing commitment to scholarly communication as a contribution to the Wisconsin Idea.
For more information, visit http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu/chapbooks/history/index.shtml.
Orders may be sent to:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: (608) 262-2600
