The Admiral and the Ambassador: One Man's Obsessive Search for the Body of Jean Paul Jones

Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/very good. First Edition. Hardcover. First Edition with full number line indicating first printing. 9 1/4" X 6 1/4". x, 310pp. Very mild shelf wear to covers and corners of unclipped dust jacket. Light creasing to edge of jacket. Blue paper over boards with spine backed in brown and lettered in gilt. A spot of toning to top edge of text block. Pages are clean and unmarked. Binding is firm and sound.

ABOUT THIS BOOK:
As the French Revolution gathered steam, the exact location of Jones's grave—and, in fact, the exact location of St. Louis cemetery in Paris, where he was buried in 1792—was forgotten: information on his death and burial were destroyed in the Paris Commune and the few who had attended his burial had passed away. His body had, though, been preserved in a lead-lined coffin filled with alcohol; theoretically, if the coffin could be located, Jones could be returned to the United States for proper burial. The Admiral and the Ambassador details Porter's long, unrelenting search for that coffin, first through scraps of archive material and written recollections of funeral attendees, and then beneath the rickety buildings that had been constructed over what he believed to be the graveyard. This book, the only full-length account of the search for and discovery of John Paul Jones's body, offers a fascinating look into the charismatic, real-life characters who populated the first century of the United States of America.(Publisher).