Part of Vowell’s aim in Lafayette is to show that the revered Founding Fathers were just men, despite the almost godlike status with which Americans regard them today. The tale of the revolution is often told as a gritty victory won by fierce, untrained colonists who were reporting to infallible, insightful commanders. The truth is that the war’s first few years were largely failures.

In the example of Valley Forge, the starving, almost-naked men who suffered through the winter are spoken of as examples of American toughness, and many view their trials as an example of their devotion to the cause of independence. However, Vowell quotes source material demonstrating that the suffering of Valley Forge was a matter of bureaucratic mismanagement. Some of the difficulties experienced by the soldiers were a result of poor, or nonexistent, planning.

Vowell’s history books often work as counter narratives to the widely accepted stories one might learn in school. In Lafayette, she pays special attention to the fact that French forces saved the Americans more than once. Without the thousands of reinforcements supplied by France, America most likely would have lost the war and remained a part of the British Empire.