Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation | Joseph J. Ellis

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation | Joseph J. Ellis | Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

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Founding Brothers:...

	Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation Joseph J. Ellis Vintage, 2002 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 389 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Elegant, analytical, absorbing, insightful-

As a teacher who taught American History to high school students (not AP kids, but still..) for 25 years, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of the events before, during and after the Revolutionary War. I am greatly humbled by this book, which brings new information and understandings to those critical decades. The book is a page-turner, even though the reader knows how it all turned out. I strongly recommend this book to everyone, history buff or not. Ellis is particularly skilled at giving both sides of each story. Heroes become goats and vice versa, and then they reverse positions before three pages have gone by. Terrific read.

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Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

Founding Brothers is an excellent history, presented in an interesting format. I gave it to our Grandson, HS freshman; he was quite pleased with how much he learned that reinforced his school lessons.

Top-notch history book

This is simply my favorite history book that I have ever read. Amazing. I could not put it down. Ellis took a series of important and interesting stories among the founding fathers and gave those great individuals life. The best three chapters were The Duel, The Dinner and The Friendship. There was never a dull moment in this book, which seamlessly incorporated all the key founders and showed what made them great. I would recommend this book to anyone.

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Our Heritage : The Men Who Gave Birth to the Home of the Free

This splendid book takes us back to the fight for independence of our country, the early beginnings which led to the Declaration of Independence. We've grown up looking at their pictures hanging on the school room walls and at other places. The Great Hall of the Library of Congress beautifully displays this early history for all generations to visit and marvel at these couragous American leaders. The portrait of George Washington who could not tell a lie, has been used in many movies and was on the wall of the store clerk's apartment in "Bundle Of Joy," and many others. It is the best known. Ben Franklin represented America in other places as a statesman and was an inventor of the first class. He came up with rhymes and common sense for the early settlers of the Eastern states.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were prominent in the Declaration of Independence composing, and who could forget John Hancock. Joseph Ellis gives details of the bickering and in-fighting to finally complete this important document. Minerva, a marble mosaic, is located on the landing of the staircase leading to the Visitors' Gallery (the heart of the Library). The quotation in Latin beneath was from Horace's Ars Poetica: "Not unwilling. Minerva erects a monument more lasting than brass."

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Maybe 3 1/2

While this text was well-written, I struggled to get through it.

There's lots of useful, probably reasonably historically accurate information in the text, true. But, first, the worship of George Washington is so prevalent as to be offensive. We seem to be in a period in which we applaud those who ostensibly founded us...what I've called treating them like "Disney characters." I'm a little skeptical of G. Washington. First, Mason Weems created a fantasy of George that I think GW's allies rather liked. We must not forget, though, that Washington was a wealthy white guy who owned slaves. (At Mount Vernon, since they created an "education center" about a year ago, they've all but produced an apotheosis of him, just like the art work on the capital rotunda!)

Then there's the "facts" that were simply wrong. The ones I remember are that "Washington was a hair under 6'4"." No, he was 6'2". And "James Madison was 5'6"." No, he was somewhere between 4'11" and 5'2" (depending on how much the describer liked him). Trivia? Not really when you're suggesting facts; their erroneous nature challenges the credibility of the whole text!

What's more, he wasn't successful in, for example, the French and Indian War. In short, GW was a human being. So, in fact, were Tom Jefferson, John and Abigail Adams, and the others in the book. But the book reads like they were fairy tale characters.

Something in the book too that bordered on offensive was the use of the phrase "band of brothers" at least 6 times. All right, John, so you think you're coining some kind of logo for the boys. Don't overdo it!

Then I don't remember if it was in the text or in the interview with the author at the end (I listened to the recorded version of it) but the author included value judgements which I thought were inappropriate to a scholarly document. One I remember is his connecting capitalism with democracy, a connection of "our system" with a market economy as if they were as natural as breathing air. Allow the reader to make his or her own decision. I don't need that sort of editorializing.

Truth be told, I was a little skeptical of the text when I found that the author had taught at West Point for years. I guess my experience with big organizations has convinced me that people make it in such structures (e.g., the army, especially the academy realm) by either believing the "right" things and/or by saying the right things to the right people at the right times. That's why such value judgements and Disney characterization might be appropriate to a member of such a structure as the army/West Point.

But, the fact is, the book is well written. So, if you feel especially ignorant of the beginning of US history, this might be a volume to read...skeptically.

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