Books: Founding Brothers

For those of you who are always keen to learn more about the Founding Fathers of our nation, particularly those who enjoy seeing their veneer of perfection stripped away to glance at the messy details of forming of the United States, Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis is a must-read. The book focuses largely on Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams and their interweaving histories by elaborating on a few specific stories from the early days of the Republic. While these stories provide a much fuller picture of the characters involved, the details provided spill out across the era to paint a much clearer portrait of everything it took to start a new nation - and one unlike anything else tried before.

The slowest piece of this book is the Preface, largely because it is also the most academic portion of the book, setting the stage for the tales and will come in the subsequent chapters. The most interesting chapter - and indeed the most insightful throughline for the whole book - is the one called "The Silence," which uses an abolition bill offered by the Quakers in 1790 as a springboard for discussing the larger slavery debate that raged quietly throughout the revolutionary generation.

I found much of what was discussed in the book to be new facts about old names and stories: the work Alexander Hamilton did to draft George Washington's famous Farewell Address, the foresight of John Adams and the political gaming that caused him the election in 1800, the repeated inconsistency of Thomas Jefferson, the full story of the famous duel between Hamilton and Aaron Burr. More surprising to me was how the politics and personalities of the young US remind me of the political climate today.

Nothing but high praise for this book, which reads more like a novel than a history book. It is available from Amazon here.