More than 200 years ago, three very different men found themselves with something in common. Silas Deane, a Connecticut merchant and politician; Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont (better known as Chevalier d'Eon), a top-level French spy; and Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, a French watchmaker and writer: these strange bedfellow were important, even vital, to the success of the American Revolution. It's a bit of a labyrinthine story, its details no doubt unfamiliar to many readers, its players forgotten or remembered for other things. Beaumarchais, for example, is best known these days as the author of The Barber of Seville and other plays. Paul traces the life of the three up to their coming together in 1776 and then follows them as they carried out a plan as complex and dangerous as any spy-novel plot, at one point, success hinged on d'Eon successfully passing himself off as a woman (luckily, he did that a lot, apparently). A rip-roaring account of the American Revolution, told from a fresh, and undeniably offbeat, perspective.
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