Liberty's torch The great adventure to build the Statue of Liberty

This biography of Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, sculptor of the Statue of Liberty, challenges prior accounts of how the colossus was realized. Yasmin Khan's Enlightening the World (2010) holds that the project originated with a group of liberal Frenchmen fond of American democracy. Not according to Mitchell. The idea was Bartholdi's alone, and he was motivated not by feelings of amity toward America but by the driver of many an artist, ambition. Directed toward sculpture by his devoted mother, Bertholdi early would learn that large works won attention. He made his initial mark with a military statue. Inspired by a tour of Egyptian monuments, he dreamed of creating the biggest statue in the world. His proposal to do so at the Suez Canal failed, but after an interlude of fighting alongside Garibaldi in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, he fixated on erecting it in an American seaport. How New York became the location is just one of the elements of Mitchell's lively story. The statue's financing, construction, transportation, and unveiling complete her often archly characterized portrait of the creatively self-promoting Bartholdi.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist

Mitchell (Three Strides Before the Wire: The Dark and Beautiful World of Horse Racing, 2002, etc.) maintains a light touch in this examination of the life of Frdric Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904), the designer of the Statue of Liberty.A proud Alsatian whose widowed mother moved him and his older brother to Paris to further their artistic careers, Bartholdi studied under painter Ary Scheffer and was influenced by the work of architect Eugne Viollet-le-Duc in his restoration of Notre-Dame. Having visited and drawn the monuments of the Nile Valley, Bartholdi fancied stone as his "mania" and initially proposed to the khedive of Egypt a colossal statue of a female slave holding a torch to stand at the mouth of the Suez Canal, a construction-in-progress marvel by engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps. Bartholdi maintained that his idea for a lighthouse in the form of "the angel Liberty" was in fact inspired by a poem by Victor Hugo. Spurred by the pro-American views of writer douard Ren de Laboulaye, whose bust Bartholdi was commissioned to make, and faced with revolution in Paris in 1871, he set sail for New York to try to sell his idea, especially as newly fashioned Central and Prospect parks needed statuesalthough nothing quite this large. Bedloe's Island in the harbor, containing 14 acres and a crumbling fort, seemed a perfect site, but it would take until October 1886 for the enormous funds to be gathered and the statue actually dedicated. Bit by bit, Bartholdi drummed up support from Franco-American friends and the American wealthy, from President Ulysses S. Grant to architect Richard Morris Hunt, while relying on the engineering know-how of Viollet-le-Duc and ironworker Honor Monduit, as well as invaluable advice from bridge builder Gustave Eiffel.A low-key, mannered treatment of the realization of a great vision. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

PROLOGUE At three in the morning on Wednesday, June 21, 1871, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi made his way up to the deck of the Pereire, hoping to catch his first glimpse of America. The weather had favored the sculptor's voyage from France, and this night proved no exception. A gentle mist covered the ocean as he tried in vain to spot the beam of a lighthouse glowing from the new world. After eleven days at sea, Bartholdi had grown weary of what he called in a letter to his mother his "long sojourn in the world of fish." The Pereire had been eerily empty, with only forty passengers on a ship meant to carry three hundred. He passed his days playing chess and watching the heaving log that measured the ship's speed. "I practice my English on several Americans who are on board. I learn phrases and walk the deck alone mumbling them, as a parish priest recites his breviary." These onboard incantations were meant to prepare Bartholdi for the greatest challenge of his career. The thirty-six-year-old artist intended to convince a nation he had never visited before to build a colossus. This was his singular vision, conceived in his own imagination, and designed by his own hand. The largest statue ever built. The sky turned pink, the Pereire cut farther west through the waves, and before long Bartholdi and his fellow passengers caught the first sight of land and a vast harbor. He described the moment in his letter: "A multitude of little sails seemed to skim the water, our fellow travelers pointed out a cloud of smoke at the farther end of a bay--and it was New York!" Excerpted from Liberty's Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty by Elizabeth Mitchell All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.