Founding Brothers

Rating:
Summary: Astounding.
Review: Founding Brothers is a phenomanal DVD. This documentary is one of a kind. Founding Brothers wet my apetite to learn more about this time period and since then, I have read many books on the same subject matter. What makes Founding Brothers so unique, is that it puts the politics of the era in perspective. For example; the myth that the founding fathers cooperated and worked peacefuly to found the single greatest document in American History, the constitution, is not true. These men were passionate, ambitious, and lived with codes of honor that rival American politicking even today. What could drive two outstanding fathers, Hamilton and Burr, to fight a duel to the death? How could the very man who wrote the words "All men are created equal," enslave his own children? And why is there a dark cloud over the Adams presidency? In Founding Brothers, you will find answers to these questions and more as this film takes you into the greatest crisis of American history, even greater then the Civil War.

Rating:
Summary: Astounding.
Review: Founding Brothers is a phenomanal DVD. This documentary is one of a kind. Founding Brothers wet my apetite to learn more about this time period and since then, I have read many books on the same subject matter. What makes Founding Brothers so unique, is that it puts the politics of the era in perspective. For example; the myth that the founding fathers cooperated and worked peacefuly to found the single greatest document in American History, the constitution, is not true. These men were passionate, ambitious, and lived with codes of honor that rival American politicking even today. What could drive two outstanding fathers, Hamilton and Burr, to fight a duel to the death? How could the very man who wrote the words "All men are created equal," enslave his own children? And why is there a dark cloud over the Adams presidency? In Founding Brothers, you will find answers to these questions and more as this film takes you into the greatest crisis of American history, even greater then the Civil War.

Rating:
Summary: the fun way to learn more about early U.S. history
Review: I love history and in recent months I have been voraciously reading / viewing various books / DVD collections. Founding Brothers is a documentary from the History Channel that is based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning book by Joseph Ellis. I would note that there is another DVD collection (created a few years ago by the History Channel) entitled Founding Fathers.
Both DVD collections discuss the lives and times of the founding fathers (brothers). This particular DVD collection starts with post revolution times (i.e constitutional congress - 1820 or so) and really dives into how, once the war was over the bickering and infighting began amongst the founding fathers. If you are looking for pre-revolution commentary than Founding Fathers is a better DVD collection to pick up as it starts with New England dissent to the winning of the war.

1. This DVD collection is well produced. Famous actors provided the voices for the characters as in Founding Fathers. Many of the voice overs are done by the same people in both collections.

2. While the DVD is certainly worth watching I found myself wishing it had more facts about the economy and its progress but, as the title states, this series is about the founding fathers.

3. The series did a nice job of discussing how various fathers had issues with slavery. It discussed whether they were pro-slavery or against it and how some had serious troubles dealing with it.

4. The one thing I thoroughly enjoyed about the DVD collection was that it clearly depicts how each of these men came together despite their different backgrounds and temperaments to found a nation.

Most of my reviews are in business / economics and I encourage people to read them, whether here on Amazon or at my personal website. If you are interested in economic history book I would encourage everyone to read The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner since it is more international in scope and deals with the lives and times of the most famous economists in history. If you are interested in economic development / evolution of U.S. property history I would encourage you to read Hernando DeSoto's Mystery of Capital but note his lack of focus on corruption in certain countries. A great general business book is by the management guru Peter Drucker entitled "The Essential Drucker."

Rating:
Summary: the fun way to learn more about early U.S. history
Review: I love history and in recent months I have been voraciously reading / viewing various books / DVD collections. Founding Brothers is a documentary from the History Channel that is based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning book by Joseph Ellis. I would note that there is another DVD collection (created a few years ago by the History Channel) entitled Founding Fathers.
Both DVD collections discuss the lives and times of the founding fathers (brothers). This particular DVD collection starts with post revolution times (i.e constitutional congress - 1820 or so) and really dives into how, once the war was over the bickering and infighting began amongst the founding fathers. If you are looking for pre-revolution commentary than Founding Fathers is a better DVD collection to pick up as it starts with New England dissent to the winning of the war.

1. This DVD collection is well produced. Famous actors provided the voices for the characters as in Founding Fathers. Many of the voice overs are done by the same people in both collections.

2. While the DVD is certainly worth watching I found myself wishing it had more facts about the economy and its progress but, as the title states, this series is about the founding fathers.

3. The series did a nice job of discussing how various fathers had issues with slavery. It discussed whether they were pro-slavery or against it and how some had serious troubles dealing with it.

4. The one thing I thoroughly enjoyed about the DVD collection was that it clearly depicts how each of these men came together despite their different backgrounds and temperaments to found a nation.

Most of my reviews are in business / economics and I encourage people to read them, whether here on Amazon or at my personal website. If you are interested in economic history book I would encourage everyone to read The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner since it is more international in scope and deals with the lives and times of the most famous economists in history. If you are interested in economic development / evolution of U.S. property history I would encourage you to read Hernando DeSoto's Mystery of Capital but note his lack of focus on corruption in certain countries. A great general business book is by the management guru Peter Drucker entitled "The Essential Drucker."

Rating:
Summary: one of the best I've ever seen
Review: I saw the History Channel show FOUNDING FATHERS and thought it was great. FOUNDING BROTHERS is even better. The stories they tell in here just make your jaw drop. I had no idea that their nasty political feuds were as bad as what goes on today - maybe worse.
The commentators great at telling what really went on and the images are fun to watch. The guy who plays Thomas Jefferson is his spitting image! They have a bunch of well known actors reading the letters of these men which works pretty well, too.
My main complaint -- I wish it was two hours longer! Kudos to the History Channel and their producers for making this wonderful show. I'm buying DVD's for all my kids.
L7

Rating:
Summary: one of the best I've ever seen
Review: I saw the History Channel show FOUNDING FATHERS and thought it was great. FOUNDING BROTHERS is even better. The stories they tell in here just make your jaw drop. I had no idea that their nasty political feuds were as bad as what goes on today - maybe worse.
The commentators great at telling what really went on and the images are fun to watch. The guy who plays Thomas Jefferson is his spitting image! They have a bunch of well known actors reading the letters of these men which works pretty well, too.
My main complaint -- I wish it was two hours longer! Kudos to the History Channel and their producers for making this wonderful show. I'm buying DVD's for all my kids.
L7

Rating:
Summary: Good but slanted intellectual history
Review: In our modern politization of history, people are forced into two groups. The first are those who've only now realized that their larger-than-life image of Jefferson, Washington and the other founders as an uncommonly civil and reasonable bunch is just that, a myth. This group is hurt by this and looks at any attempt to point out the founders weaknesses, internal inconsistencies and what-have-you as nothing less than high slander. Then there is the group that realizes that the founders WERE flawed, contradictory and not quite the proper stuff of legends. This group, though generally out of political spite, not only embraces this fact, but loves to rub any history buff's face in it, pointing to our flawed history as certain proof that America was concieved in shame.

This video is refreshing because we get a good dose of amunition for both sides. Starting with George Washington's innaguration, this film takes us through a brilliant story of a people forced to govern from scratch. The film does a good job in pointing out that unlike today, presidents, cabinets, legsilators had no precedents. Who could Washington, Hamilton, the congress who in 1800 dealt with the first election recount in history; none of these, had anyone to look to anyone to see how it was done before. It wasn't done before! We go through the Washington, Adams, and Jefferson presidency; our dealings with France, a new economic system, slavery, and colliding visions of the federalists and the republicans (nowadays these would be termed the republicans and the democrats, respectively). Not quite a Ken Burns film but close!

With that said, this film is extemely biased towards the federalists. Whether in the battle of words between Adams and Jefferson, where only Jefferson is made to look hot-headed, or the constant understatement of Madison's intellect (well, that is the republican, not the federalist Madison). If you are like me, an olld whig republican (nowadays called a libertarian or classical liberal) you will be slightly annoyed at oversights like these. Jefferson was by no means a perfect or for that matter, a thorougly respectable individual but this film highlights these flaws while letting Hamilton's slide.

The only other quip I have is that the legislature and judicial branch are completely ignored. It's understandable because for a film on the History Channel must focus on what the general public is most interested in and this by far is the executive branch (can you name at least one federal judge?) but it would have been nice once in a while to be reminded of their existence.

Altough this film lacks some of the vigor that Founding Fathers had (with the fiery orations by speakers at the Constitutional Convention), it is still thorougly engrossing. It conveys what so few films, books and (PUKE!!) history lessons seem to almost, but never fully, get across; the founders and our history were/was living and breating.

Rating:
Summary: Great Companion To The Book
Review: This DVD set combined with the book of the same title offers excellent insight to the birth of a great Republic. The DVD is limited in breadth due to time constraints, though it does offer a nice amount of information. Because there were so many heroes and important figures of this historical time, the film makers chose to focus mainly on a few key people: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Almost two whole segments are spent, and rightfully so, on George Washington.

Nothing new is exposed for well-read historians, but for casual history buffs there are some great details presented. Interesting analysis, questions, answers, and anecdotes throughout. We get an insiders view of the events and people. We see political tactics used by the key players that would make modern politicians shy up. We get a picture not normally found in text books of the stage set for this experiment. Washington, for example, after being elected President had an interesting ride from Virginia to Philadelphia in a carriage with a driver so drunk that his baggage was tossed over several times. Once in Philadelphia, Washington wondered, how should a President act? After all there was no model. He had to act important, but not monocratic, a tough thing to do.

The filmmakers do a nice job contrasting the Federalist and Anti-Federalist (Republican) differences and the very strong personalities involved. They do a nice job weaving the relationships in and out as the years progressed. DVD one starts at the tail end of the American Revolution and DVD two wraps up with the death of Jefferson and Adams on July 4, 1826. It would be very tough to make a two DVD set that properly covers all the material, events, and people involved with this important time period. I think the filmmakers did a fine job here. A one star hit for all but ignoring Franklin's political, philosophical, diplomatic, and social contributions. Even though Franklin was in his advanced years, his contributions to the development of the young nation were very significant. Maybe they felt Franklin too overwhelming a figure for this project, I don't know. Still an effort should have been made.

I applaud the material offered and find this to be a worthy set to own and plan to view it many times.

Rating:
Summary: Great Companion To The Book
Review: This DVD set combined with the book of the same title offers excellent insight to the birth of a great Republic. The DVD is limited in breadth due to time constraints, though it does offer a nice amount of information. Because there were so many heroes and important figures of this historical time, the film makers chose to focus mainly on a few key people: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Almost two whole segments are spent, and rightfully so, on George Washington.

Nothing new is exposed for well-read historians, but for casual history buffs there are some great details presented. Interesting analysis, questions, answers, and anecdotes throughout. We get an insiders view of the events and people. We see political tactics used by the key players that would make modern politicians shy up. We get a picture not normally found in text books of the stage set for this experiment. Washington, for example, after being elected President had an interesting ride from Virginia to Philadelphia in a carriage with a driver so drunk that his baggage was tossed over several times. Once in Philadelphia, Washington wondered, how should a President act? After all there was no model. He had to act important, but not monocratic, a tough thing to do.

The filmmakers do a nice job contrasting the Federalist and Anti-Federalist (Republican) differences and the very strong personalities involved. They do a nice job weaving the relationships in and out as the years progressed. DVD one starts at the tail end of the American Revolution and DVD two wraps up with the death of Jefferson and Adams on July 4, 1826. It would be very tough to make a two DVD set that properly covers all the material, events, and people involved with this important time period. I think the filmmakers did a fine job here. A one star hit for all but ignoring Franklin's political, philosophical, diplomatic, and social contributions. Even though Franklin was in his advanced years, his contributions to the development of the young nation were very significant. Maybe they felt Franklin too overwhelming a figure for this project, I don't know. Still an effort should have been made.

I applaud the material offered and find this to be a worthy set to own and plan to view it many times.

Rating:
Summary: What Wonderful Way to Get Your History
Review: This four part series produced by the History Channel is very well done. I particularly enjoyed the musical selections, as well as the theatrics, and was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the various "reenactments" - they are actually pretty good and not too cheesy (as most such attempts often are). The numerous "voices" of the patriots supplied by a few fairly well-known actors are fairly well done. In all this series does an excellent job presenting a portion of early American history in a very entertaining way.

I must reluctantly disagree with a couple other reviewers of the series with respect to any noticeable bias towards one side or the other in the federalist/anti-federalist debate. I thought that everyone was portrayed accurately, with the arguable exception of John Adams, who I thought was portrayed a bit less brilliant than I think he really was (this perception, by the way, could very well be due to the early influence John Ferling has had on me). Thomas Jefferson, by contrast, is portrayed perfectly as the very likeable, albeit pouty, potentially back-stabbing walking contradiction that he was. George Washington is cast as the great unifying leader that he was, a classic General-President (as opposed to the more Philosophic John Adams), who perpetually remains above the partisan fray. I don't believe Jefferson lost his cool anywhere in this production, aside from being a sore loser by taking his marbles home to Monticello whenever he loses a major political debate. By contrast, it is the wise sage Adams who loses his cool and makes a couple emotion-laden, foolhardy decisions. The series also notes that it was Washington who had the very most trouble controlling his temper when under personal attacks (most from Jefferson, by the way). I should also mention that I am a dues paying member of both the modern day Republican Party and the (anti-federalist) Federalist Society, so if anything my personal bias runs the other direction than the tone in which I argue. The bottom line is that I found the Founding Brothers quite fair and balanced towards both Republicans and Federalists.

On another note, I thought the series did an excellent job giving Hamilton his deserved attention, including his continued battles with Aaron Burr that culminate into the famous duel between the two and results in Hamilton's untimely death. I also believe the series ends wonderfully by concentrating on the correspondence between Adams and Jefferson in the twilight of their lives - certainly a tribute to both great men and the spirit of bipartisanship, to be sure. A full five stars is warranted.