Stacy Schiff
Author of Cleopatra: A Life
About the Author
Stacy Schiff was born on October 26, 1961 in Adams, Massachusetts. She received a B.A. degree from Williams College in 1982. She was a Senior Editor at Simon and Schuster until 1990. She is the author of several nonfiction books including Saint-Exupéry: A Biography about Antoine de Saint Exupéry, show more Cleopatra: A Life, and The Witches: Salem 1692. She won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for Véra: Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov in 2000. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by Stacy Schiff
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Schiff, Stacy
- Other names
- De La Bruyère, Stacy
- Birthdate
- 1961-10-26
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Williams College (BA|1982)
Phillips Andover Academy - Occupations
- editor
non-fiction writer
columnist - Organizations
- Simon & Schuster
- Awards and honors
- American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award (Literature, 2006)
- Agent
- Eric Simonoff (William Morris Endeavor)
- Short biography
- Stacy Schiff is the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize, the Ambassador Award in American Studies, and the Gilbert Chinard Prize of the Institut Français d'Amérique. Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and was a Director’s Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She was awarded a 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Schiff has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe, among other publications. She lives in New York City. Her newest book is entitled "Cleopatra: A Life" (Little, Brown & Co., 2010).
Official website: www.stacyschiff.com - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Adams, Massachusetts, USA
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada - Map Location
- USA
Members
Discussions
Cleopatra; A Life by Stacy Schiff in Ancient History (August 2013)
Reviews
Without a doubt, this is a biased biography, though I am hard-pressed to recall any non-fiction that isn't. As they say, history is written by the victors (generally synonymous with "oppressors" in some fashion), and if it means challenging the patriarchal storytelling of one of the most powerful women in history, well then, I'm listening.
This was an unintentional timely read (listen) on my part, which made it all the more gratifying and frustrating with the events of the past week. Even show more though Cleopatra proved a strong Ptolemaic ruler, a strategist to the end, an intellectual, a pragmatist, historians have largely stripped her of any real agency--as Schiff points out--other than as the lover/manipulator of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. That is certainly the only light I had cast her in prior to this book. I am grateful to Schiff for laying out Cleopatra's life and reign and examining the motives behind why her achievements go overlooked.
Bonus: if you're a sucker for Hellenistic/Roman empire dramarama, high five! You're going to be in heaven.
Whether or not you are as taken by this biography as I was, I would be surprised if you come out on the other side without a voice in your head forever questioning why our histories are told the way they are. show less
This was an unintentional timely read (listen) on my part, which made it all the more gratifying and frustrating with the events of the past week. Even show more though Cleopatra proved a strong Ptolemaic ruler, a strategist to the end, an intellectual, a pragmatist, historians have largely stripped her of any real agency--as Schiff points out--other than as the lover/manipulator of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. That is certainly the only light I had cast her in prior to this book. I am grateful to Schiff for laying out Cleopatra's life and reign and examining the motives behind why her achievements go overlooked.
Bonus: if you're a sucker for Hellenistic/Roman empire dramarama, high five! You're going to be in heaven.
Whether or not you are as taken by this biography as I was, I would be surprised if you come out on the other side without a voice in your head forever questioning why our histories are told the way they are. show less
Until reading this book I knew little about Cleopatra beyond the word on the street, which is based more on Elizabeth Taylor's portrayal than on Cleopatra. Schiff's meticulous biography is fascinating. She covers all kinds of detail: life, culture, medicine, politics, government, warfare, and education. She also describes a lavish opulence that is - and was at the time - astonishing. But what Schiff does best is to disparage the image of Cleopatra as a wicked temptress, instead showing the show more reader a more credible picture of a remarkably intelligent woman and powerful monarch who brought prosperity to her country. This is a compelling book with balanced opinions that I will keep to read again, and for reference. Highly recommended.
"Her power has been made to derive from her sexuality... It has always been preferable to attribute a woman's success to her beauty rather than to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life. Against a powerful enchantress there is no contest, against a woman who ensnares a man in the coils of her serpentine intelligence, in her ropes of pearls, there should at least be some kind of antidote. Cleopatra unsettles more as sage than as seductress. It is less threatening to believe her fatally attractive than fatally intelligent."
"There was a glamour and a grandeur to her story well before Octavian or Shakespeare got his hands on it." show less
"Her power has been made to derive from her sexuality... It has always been preferable to attribute a woman's success to her beauty rather than to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life. Against a powerful enchantress there is no contest, against a woman who ensnares a man in the coils of her serpentine intelligence, in her ropes of pearls, there should at least be some kind of antidote. Cleopatra unsettles more as sage than as seductress. It is less threatening to believe her fatally attractive than fatally intelligent."
"There was a glamour and a grandeur to her story well before Octavian or Shakespeare got his hands on it." show less
Samuel Adams often feels like a Founding Father doomed to be overlooked. My previous impressions of him (from snippets in books and documentaries) were of a rabble rouser, someone who participated in the early days of the American Revolution but who didn't really have the intellectual foundations of figures like his cousin John Adams. This biography is well positioned to reframe that impression. Samuel Adams was a Harvard graduate, a member of the Massachusetts house of representatives, and show more one of the most influential figures in the early American Revolution. Adams was actively involved in organizing protests against the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, and he had a role in many of the incidents which centered around Boston such as the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Politically active and influential until the end of his life, Adams emerges in this biography as a pivotal revolutionary in American history, and I appreciate the fresh approach to a Founding Father who has received less attention. show less
Summary: A biography of this Boston revolutionary who, working mostly behind the scenes, fanned into flame the colonists decision to seek independence.
For many, the name of Samuel Adams calls to mind a beer. And indeed, Adams was a maltster for part of his life. But one of the things that emerges is that Adams was a failure at everything he did except for kindling the fires that led to a revolution. He inherited debt from a failed land scheme of his father. He failed as a tax collector, show more perhaps unsurprisingly. He really got by with the help of his friends.
What Stacy Schiff makes clear is that there was one thing that Samuel Adams was good at: igniting a revolution. It might well be said that Samuel Adams played as large a part in stirring up the movement that led to a revolution as his more famous peers, is cousin John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.
Yet we know much less of him. What we learn from reading Schiff is that much of this was necessary because his activities could easily lead to arrest if known. As it is, he often had to flee writs of arrest, as he did in consequence of Paul Revere’s ride to warn him that the British authorities were marching to Lexington, in part, to arrest him, as well to seize ammunition stores. He often destroyed papers, or published pieces anonymously, planned in back rooms, maintaining an elusive presence that gave him what we might call “plausible deniability.” All of this makes the historian’s job harder.
Schiff focuses on the 15 years beginning with 1764 and the Stamp Act that inflamed feeling. Adams was able to put his finger on the fundamental issue of taxation without representation. He was not present at the destruction of the home of the man who represented the British opposition, Thomas Hutchinson, but he certainly inflamed the feeling of fellow-Bostonians that led to the act. He awakened his fellow colonists that they were being treated as inferiors with little or no say about how they were governed when, in fact they had shown them capable of self-government in their town councils and in colonial legislative bodies.
The introduction of British troops further escalated his efforts, and led to campaigns of misinformation, including allegations that the British troops assaulted young girls. Later a blockade on trade led him to set up committees of correspondence between the colonies, the first steps down the road to Philadelphia and the Declaration of Independence. He was one of the first to moot the idea of independence and to recognize this would mean armed resistance.
He was the skilled propagandist who turned a military action in which five Bostonians died into the Boston Massacre, memorialized each year with public speeches. When imports of East India tea were forced on Bostonians, he disingenuously arranged for the protection of the cargo while covertly planning its destruction by “redskins.” Schiff gives the most extensive account of this episode I’ve read, emphasizing that those who dumped the tea into Boston harbor even cleaned up the ship afterwards!
For anything else than making revolution, he wasn’t terribly practical. His second wife had to work while he was at the Continental Congress. People were relieved in his later years when he finally resigned as Massachusetts governor. But his ability to articulate the case for American independence emboldened others, including his younger cousin John Adams. His network of relationships, represented eventually in the committees of correspondence reflected his ability to forge a movement of disparate persons. While he was not above underhanded means, he held to high ideals for the country, including an early opposition to slavery. Offered a slave, he required her to be freed first.
Schiff’s work transforms Adams from a figure in the background to one whose dynamic role in fostering the revolution necessarily required work in the background. Schiff helps us understand how this singularly skilled man played a far bigger role in mobilizing colonies into the revolt that became what we call the War of Independence that created a nation. When most simply wanted to resolve grievances, Adams saw that, risky as it was, breaking with British rule was where things were headed, seeing further and sooner than most. show less
For many, the name of Samuel Adams calls to mind a beer. And indeed, Adams was a maltster for part of his life. But one of the things that emerges is that Adams was a failure at everything he did except for kindling the fires that led to a revolution. He inherited debt from a failed land scheme of his father. He failed as a tax collector, show more perhaps unsurprisingly. He really got by with the help of his friends.
What Stacy Schiff makes clear is that there was one thing that Samuel Adams was good at: igniting a revolution. It might well be said that Samuel Adams played as large a part in stirring up the movement that led to a revolution as his more famous peers, is cousin John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.
Yet we know much less of him. What we learn from reading Schiff is that much of this was necessary because his activities could easily lead to arrest if known. As it is, he often had to flee writs of arrest, as he did in consequence of Paul Revere’s ride to warn him that the British authorities were marching to Lexington, in part, to arrest him, as well to seize ammunition stores. He often destroyed papers, or published pieces anonymously, planned in back rooms, maintaining an elusive presence that gave him what we might call “plausible deniability.” All of this makes the historian’s job harder.
Schiff focuses on the 15 years beginning with 1764 and the Stamp Act that inflamed feeling. Adams was able to put his finger on the fundamental issue of taxation without representation. He was not present at the destruction of the home of the man who represented the British opposition, Thomas Hutchinson, but he certainly inflamed the feeling of fellow-Bostonians that led to the act. He awakened his fellow colonists that they were being treated as inferiors with little or no say about how they were governed when, in fact they had shown them capable of self-government in their town councils and in colonial legislative bodies.
The introduction of British troops further escalated his efforts, and led to campaigns of misinformation, including allegations that the British troops assaulted young girls. Later a blockade on trade led him to set up committees of correspondence between the colonies, the first steps down the road to Philadelphia and the Declaration of Independence. He was one of the first to moot the idea of independence and to recognize this would mean armed resistance.
He was the skilled propagandist who turned a military action in which five Bostonians died into the Boston Massacre, memorialized each year with public speeches. When imports of East India tea were forced on Bostonians, he disingenuously arranged for the protection of the cargo while covertly planning its destruction by “redskins.” Schiff gives the most extensive account of this episode I’ve read, emphasizing that those who dumped the tea into Boston harbor even cleaned up the ship afterwards!
For anything else than making revolution, he wasn’t terribly practical. His second wife had to work while he was at the Continental Congress. People were relieved in his later years when he finally resigned as Massachusetts governor. But his ability to articulate the case for American independence emboldened others, including his younger cousin John Adams. His network of relationships, represented eventually in the committees of correspondence reflected his ability to forge a movement of disparate persons. While he was not above underhanded means, he held to high ideals for the country, including an early opposition to slavery. Offered a slave, he required her to be freed first.
Schiff’s work transforms Adams from a figure in the background to one whose dynamic role in fostering the revolution necessarily required work in the background. Schiff helps us understand how this singularly skilled man played a far bigger role in mobilizing colonies into the revolt that became what we call the War of Independence that created a nation. When most simply wanted to resolve grievances, Adams saw that, risky as it was, breaking with British rule was where things were headed, seeing further and sooner than most. show less
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