François de Callières is the author of “On Negotiating with Sovereigns,” an iconic work on diplomacy that has rarely if ever been out of print in English translation since first published in 1716. But Callières, who lived 1645–1717, was more than the author of a single book. From modest provincial origins, he rose to a position of power and influence at the court of Louis XIV, including the directorship of the Académie Française. Laurence Pope’s critical biography of Callières, published by Republic of Letters in The Netherlands, is the 41st volume in the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series. Drawing on previously undiscovered archival materials, Pope traces Callières’s long political career, from a first clandestine mission to Poland in 1670 to his advocacy of the failed Franco-Jacobite invasion of Scotland in 1708. He documents the practice of the historical Callières, in contrast to the high-minded theory of “On Negotiating with Sovereigns” (or Princes, as often translated).