In this landmark work of history and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Joseph J. Ellisexplores how a group of greatly gifted but deeply flawed individuals—Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Madison—confronted the overwhelming challenges before them to set the course for our nation. The United States was more a fragile hope than a reality in 1790. During the decade that followed, the Founding Fathers—re-examined...
A group portrait of America's first four presidents from Virginia focuses on a series of key historical episodes that illustrate how the myriad leadership roles of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe promoted transcendental, if contradictory, national views about freedom and equality.
A vivid account of leadership focusing on the first four Virginia presidents--George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe--from the bestselling...
"Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds, or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slave owner, while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist...
Presents the lives, deaths, and scandals involving the thirty-nine signers of the United States Constitution, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and James McHenry.
Reveals who the United States founding fathers were, discussing their roles in founding the nation, but also who they were outside of politics and government.
Surprisingly, no previous book has ever explored how family life shaped the political careers of America's great Founding Fathers-men like George Mason, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. In this original and intimate portrait, historian Lorri Glover brings to life the vexing, joyful, arduous, and sometimes tragic experiences of the architects of the American Republic who, while building a nation, were also raising...
"Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician he co-founded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk...
"Today, the U.S. Constitution is the oldest, continually-operating instrument of government in the world. But to think of the Constitution as a fully-formed, canonical document is to miss out on an honest, well-rounded grasp of American history. Now, more than ever, any well-informed citizen should understand how the Constitution lives, breathes, and endures. In collaboration with Smithsonian, these 36 lectures are a deep dive into the creation
Profiles the sixth American president, sharing insight into his exposure to the ideas that influenced the Founding Fathers, discussing his European travels, and highlighting his views on slavery.
"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian comes a masterful, first-of-its-kind dual biography of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, illuminating their partnership's enduring importance. Theirs was a three-decade-long bond that, more than any other pairing, would forge the United States. Vastly different men, Benjamin Franklin--an abolitionist freethinker from the urban north--and George Washington--a slaveholding general from the agrarian...
"George Mason was a short, bookish man who was a friend and neighbor of athletic, broad-shouldered George Washington. Unlike Washington, Mason has been virtually forgotten by history. But this new biography of forgotten patriot George Mason makes a convincing case that Mason belongs in the pantheon of honored Founding Fathers. Trained in the law, Mason was also a farmer, philosopher, botanist, and musician. He was one of the architects of the Declaration...
Discusses the men and women who, in the early days of the United States, spoke out about the threat of a too powerful and intrusive federal government.
"When the Revolutionary War ended in victory, there remained the stupendous problem of how to establish a workable democratic government in the vast, newly independent country. Three key Founding Fathers played significant roles: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton. Their lives and policies could not have been more different; their relationships with each other were complex and often rife with animosity. And yet these three men led...