Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 11 hours ago
A Pulitzer Prize-winner, Stacy Schiff is the author, most recently, of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, which was the winner of the Colonial Dames of America Book Award and a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize. She is also author of A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America which won the George Washington Book Prize, the Ambassador Award in American Studies, and the Gilbert Chinard Prize of the Institut Français d’Amérique. Recently, the book was made into an eight-part miniseries by AppleTV+. Schiff has provided on-camera commentary for various documentaries, including Ken Burns’s Benjamin Franklin and The American Revolution.
In this Constitutional Conversation, Ms. Schiff speaks about the importance of Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin to the American Revolution with the James Madison Foundation's Senior Academic Advisory Consultant, Dr. Jeffry H. Morrison of Christopher Newport University.
Chapters:
00:00 - 06:02 - Improvisational Techniques of Benjamin Franklin in France
06:03 - 08:02 - Charming the French
8:03 - 12:00 - Explaining Franklin
12:01 - 16:30 - Doubts
16:32 - 21:55 - Beaumarchais and Voltaire
21:56 - 23:49 - Franklin and Religion
24:50 - 27:49 - Comte de Vergennes
28:50 - The Indispensible Franklin
A Pulitzer Prize-winner, Stacy Schiff is the author, most recently, of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, which was the winner of the Colonial Dames of America Book Award and a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize. She is also author of A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America which won the George Washington Book Prize, the Ambassador Award in American Studies, and the Gilbert Chinard Prize of the Institut Français d’Amérique. Recently, the book was made into an eight-part miniseries by AppleTV+. Schiff has provided on-camera commentary for various documentaries, including Ken Burns’s Benjamin Franklin and The American Revolution.
In this Constitutional Conversation, Ms. Schiff speaks about the importance of Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin to the American Revolution with the James Madison Foundation's Senior Academic Advisory Consultant, Dr. Jeffry H. Morrison of Christopher Newport University.
Chapters:
00:00 - 06:02 - Improvisational Techniques of Benjamin Franklin in France
06:03 - 08:02 - Charming the French
8:03 - 12:00 - Explaining Franklin
12:01 - 16:30 - Doubts
16:32 - 21:55 - Beaumarchais and Voltaire
21:56 - 23:49 - Franklin and Religion
24:50 - 27:49 - Comte de Vergennes
28:50 - The Indispensible Franklin
