Praised for her “learned, engagingly discursive, funny, sometimes even jolly” (New York Times Book Review) romps through American history, cultural critic Sarah Vowell is a contributing editor for National Public Radio’s This American Life. She is the author of The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Take the Cannoli, Assassination Vacation, and Unfamiliar Fishes, and she has been published in The Village Voice, Esquire, and the Los Angeles Times, among many other periodicals. Her new book offers a frank and funny portrait of the French hero of the American Revolution and his insightful 1824 return to a young country.

In conversation with Wesley Stace