Editorial Reviews:
The Ambassadors, by Henry James, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences?biographical, historical, and literary?to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. One of Henry James?s three late masterpieces, and an exemplar of his complex, mature style, The Ambassadors is considered by many the author?s finest work. James himself judged it to be ?frankly, quite the best, ?all round,? of my productions.?
The story follows Lambert Strether, a staunch and stoical New Englander, as he travels abroad to rescue his employer?s prodigal son, Chad, from the seductive pitfalls of existence in Paris. Yet the social pleasures of the European capital awaken new urges in the fifty-five year old, and he begins to reconsider his own inadequately realized life. He soon beseeches Chad, ?Live all you can; it?s a mistake not to. It doesn?t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven?t had that what have you had??
As Strether himself becomes involved in a relationship with the fascinating Maria Gostrey, a second, more determined, ambassador is dispatched. An ultimatum is delivered?and resisted?but then an accident reveals surprising truths to Strether, and he must decide whether his loyalties lie with old Europe or new America.
A bittersweet paean to the life not lived, The Ambassadors is one of the most achingly beautiful and moving novels ever written. Kyle Patrick Smith was raised in San Diego, California, and educated at Harvard. A writer and critic, he lives in Manhattan.
The Ambassadors, which Henry James considered his best work, is the most exquisite refinement of his favorite theme: the collision of American innocence with European experience. This time, James recounts the continental journey of Louis Lambert Strether--a fiftysomething man of the world who has been dispatched abroad by a rich widow, Mrs. Newsome. His mission: to save her son Chadwick from the clutches of a wicked (i.e., European) woman, and to convince the prodigal to return to Woollett, Massachusetts. Instead, this all-American envoy finds Europe growing on him. Strether also becomes involved in a very Jamesian "relation" with the fascinating Miss Maria Gostrey, a fellow American and informal Sacajawea to her compatriots. Clearly Paris has "improved" Chad beyond recognition, and convincing him to return to the U.S. is going to be a very, very hard sell. Suspense, of course, is hardly James's stock-in-trade. But there is no more meticulous mapper of tone and atmosphere, nuance and implication. His hyper-refined characters are at their best in dialogue, particularly when they're exchanging morsels of gossip. Astute, funny, and relentlessly intelligent, James amply fulfills his own description of the novelist as a person upon whom nothing is lost. --Rhian Ellis
Customer Reviews:
Displaying 1 to 5 of 30 total reviews (Page 1 of 7):
 An unconvincing conversion of an American mind
The Ambassadors, by Henry James is a book that straddles the styles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It concerns the plight of the ridiculously-named Lambert Strether, sent from America to Paris to recover the wayward son of a wealthy family. Strether, who, by his own admission, is a failure, looks forward to his marriage (which I found unbelievable) with his boss, the matriarch of the family, if he is successful in bringing Chadwick home. However, while abroad he succumbs to the unemployed, carefree lifestyles of the Americans in Paris of which number Chad is included. Although a third person narrative, all events are filtered through the somewhat dim-witted Strether. Despite very difficult passages with almost endless parenthetical clauses, and such sentences as "...the greatest divergence from which would be precisely the element of any lubrication of their intercourse by levity," the interested reader will become aware of the reality of situations well before Strether. Strether's conversion from American idiot to bohemian is unconvincing. He finds Chadwick "improved" without being able to explain why (Strether is impressed that Chadwick knows how to enter a box seat at a theater - that about sums up the best Strether can say about the young man), he quickly befriends Miss Gostrey without reason (H. James admit that Gostrey is mostly a device to allow for explanation where Strether fails), and is charmed by Madame de Vionnet despite an obviously illicit affair. It takes Mr. Strether endless amounts of thought to figure out the simplest things. This novel has little reward for the persistent.
The introduction by Kyle Patrick Smith in this Barnes & Noble version is nevertheless insightful.  The Audiobook is Easier
The audiobook version of The Ambassadors makes the famously dense prose of Henry James easier (but not easy)to wade through. Most of the book consists of scenes in which two of the several principals meet to discuss the basic situation: whether or not a young New England manufacturing heir, Chad Newsome, can be persuaded to leave Paris--and his paramour, Madame de Vionnet--and return to his Mom in America.
Everyone else is some kind of ambassador. Most prominently, Lambert Strether is Mom's fiancee and first ambassador. When he succumbs to the charms of Europe and Madame de Vionnet, more insulated ambassadors race over from America--Mom's daughter, Sarah, and son-in-law Jim--to try their luck, ineffectively, as it turns out, with the wayward Chad.
The role of ambassador becomes more nuanced as various characters from Europe and America assume the role with each other in subtle ways. Strether, the most deeply explored and self-aware character, demonstrates
an inner-ambassadorian way of managing his own conflicts and divided loyalties.
All this takes place in slow motion over the course of three downloads.
James structures each scene, or dialogue between two principals, by leap-frogging from the beginning of the scene to it's end, then back-tracking to reveal the middle. This seems to be consistent with his means-justifying-the end theme, in which the interesting thing is not how things wind up (which is unresolved in The Ambassadors), but how they get there.  The failure to enjoy
A wealthy US family sends its `ambassadors' to Paris in order to convince an heir to abandon the `life of a pagan' and return home to run the family business.
The theme of Henry James's impeccably written and extremely polished prose is what Nietzsche called the `right or the wrong conjugation': to live or to be lived. `One lives in fine as one can. Still, one has the illusion of freedom; therefore don't be like me, without the memory of that illusion. Don't at any rate miss things out of stupidity. Live!'
For Henry James, people lived in `the corruption of Europe' with its `femmes du monde'; people were lived in the US. It is the Catholic (live like God in France) against the Protestant ethic (`I seem to have a life only for other people').
We are far away here from the Calvinist lesson of `Daisy Miller' who died because she didn't respect the supreme respectability of her class.
The novel advances extremely slowly, is full of suggestions, hints, (mis)understandings and fluctuating feelings. Direct confrontations are subdued to the extreme, and end with a laugh.
The novel has another typical characteristic of James's stories: it's all about `thoroughbred' people, sublime members of the high society. They are presented in a superlative style: prodigious, exquisite, graceful, supreme, transcendent, precious, admirable, beautiful, bright, lovely, magnificent, splendid, brilliant, wonderful ...
With its essential message, this novel is a classic masterpiece.
Not to be missed.
The Ambassadors
This is surely one of the great works of literature. The style may seem at times slow going, but it rewards the patient reader with its rich, sensitive portrayal of characters and the varied effects of the old world charm of Paris on New England visitors. It is suspenseful thoughtful and brilliant in its depiction of social interactions.  Wrong cover
The book arrived in good condition, but it didn't have the beautiful red embossed hardcover that the website shows. More Customer Reviews:
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