Count of Concord

Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, was—as Nicholas Delbanco writes—"world famous in his lifetime," yet now he has been "almost wholly forgotten." Like Delbanco himself, Sally Ormsby Thompson Robinson—the narrator of this novel and the Count's fictional, last-surviving relative—is "haunted" by one of history's most fascinating and remarkable figures. On par with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Count Rumford was, among many other things, a politician, a spy, a philanthropist, and above all, a scientist. Based on countless historical documents, including letters and essays by Thompson himself, The Count of Concord brings to life the remarkable career of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford.

The Washington Post - Jerome Charyn

He hardly seems to have the flesh or the cunning for the hero of a novel. Yet in The Count of Concord, Nicholas Delbanco has fashioned a wondrous story around him, having been "haunted" by Thompson's doomed persona, he says, for over 20 years. And perhaps Thompson is the perfect dream—or nightmare—of a novelist's mind. He seems to have existed utterly outside the crack of emotion. Despite his various affairs and activities, Count Rumford cast a very small shadow. Delbanco sculpts around him, creating an energetic panoply of characters who bump in and out of his mysterious life.

Nicholas Delbanco is a British-born American who received his B.A. from Harvard and his M.A. from Columbia University. He currently directs the Hopwood Awards Program and is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English at the University of Michigan. An editor and author of more than twenty books, Delbanco has received numerous awards—among them a Guggenheim Fellowship and two Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.