"Best known as the author of the comedies that became Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Beaumarchais was a high-spirited adventurer for whom writing plays was only an 'honest relaxation.' This erudite and wry biography covers the full range of his occupations, including watchmaking, espionage, pamphleteering, and transatlantic trade. Born into a modest family, he clambered into court society largely through charm and smart taste in consorts; even the name Beaumarchais was borrowed from one of his wives. But social success didn't blunt his populist instincts or the 'insane courage' with which he expressed them. One play derided the nobility for taking 'the trouble to be born and nothing else,' and it was as much sympathy with democratic ideals as desire for profit, Lever argues, that led Beaumarchais to supply guns for the American Revolution."—The New Yorker