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Summary: Sibling Rivalries!
Review: In Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis, we learn about the great men who created our country. George Washington, Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and James Monroe are the men who, in Ellis' opinion, make up our founding brothers.The book focuses on 6 separate events that, Ellis argues, had the most impact on the future of our country. Events like the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr and the sometimes rocky relationship between Jefferson and Adams are encapsulated in the chapters of Founding Brothers. The book is not action packed and it does not fly by, but due to Ellis' detailed research we feel like we are right in the middle of all of the action. I am young, and in school I was under the impression that all of these men were good friends. The portrait that Ellis paints of the founding brothers is the complete opposite. There were intense rivalries among all of the founding brothers, and intense debate and letter writing were evidence of this. The most debated issue seemed to be slavery and Ellis makes the point that the abolishment of slavery was a hotly contested topic for many years, but nothing was actually done until Lincoln freed the slaves many years later. I think that every American citizen needs to read this book so they can fully appreciate exactly what the founding brothers went through to create our "more perfect union." This book won the Pulitzer Prize, pick it up and find out why! You might just learn something in the process.
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Summary: Founding Brothers
Review: Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis is a concise and well balanced book about the Founding Fathers and the events and times that lead to the Founding of the United States. This deeply gifted group were not without their respective flaws as we read on in this book, but also they overcame many of the challenges that were evident which made these men forge a new nation. The principle characters in this book are George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jeferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr. As we read, we find that the author brings considerable knowledge to this work as he leads us through short, reveting, and revealing stories. The contents of this short tome are "The Duel" with Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr lead off. Then in the next chapters "The Dinner, The Silence, The Farewell, The Collaborators, and The Friendship all fall in a chronological order. Each story could, in its own right, be a complete short story, but the author builds with this order to get a better picture of how times and events played out. As I mentioned earlier, this is a concise work, but nevertheless, this is a well written and documented work. Written with a command of the subject and well organized, we get a feeling that we are being transported to this time and events are pouring out in front of us. We get psychological, political, and physical analysis... with a storytelling narritive that flows as we are engrossed in the fabric of the times. This book was written to whet our awareness and perceptiveness. Giving us human details of what these men felt and a quality friendship, a rare insight indeed. The book is well documented and eminetly fascinating. Read it and enjoy an eloquently conveyed story.
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Summary: A Magical Trip into Revolutionary Times
Review: This book is must reading if you have recently read "Adams." "Founding Brothers" is a magically written compelling study of the philosophies and imperatives driving those seven "revolutionaries" who experienced such varied visions of the future of this new country known as America. One gains a thorough understanding of the difficulties they experienced, each in his own way, in order to give birth to and nuture this wild hardly controllable land in the late eighteenth century. That is the power of this book: understanding why each of these brilliant men went their different ways, in some cases fighting each other's efforts. I hated when the last line of the last chapter arrived. No other book has given me so much insight into this important period in our country's life. Every citizen should read it to gain greater appreciation of what we are truly about.
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Summary: letter writing
Review: The opening part, i believe, is sub-par in its analysis of the dual of hamilton and burr. It is heavily pro-Hamilton (given that history is heavily pro-Hamilton, i did not say fact though) and i think it shadows Burr's character a little too much. The middle segments were decent. They gave good stories, but not truly memorable ones. The last, and largest, part was on the correspondence between Thoams Jefferson and John Adams. I ate this up. I became so enthralled with their letters that i began my own correspondences with friends all over the country. If anything, i would recomend this book to help bring back the love of personal letters in an impersonal age. just eat that cliche up
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Summary: Exquitely written and insightfully analyzed
Review: Ellis has done a superb job of analyzing the formation of the United States as a nation. Our founding fathers (and Mother, thank you Abigail) are shown in ways I wish our public schools would acknowledge to our children. They understood the enormity of what they had embarked on...this grand experiment of building a republic of divergent ideologies characterized by self-threatening limitations on centralized power. The magnanimous gestures of Washington, the carefully crafted political compromise, the moral courage, the perceptive foreign policy. If only for statesmen such as these today! Exquisitely written, Ellis has a first-rate novelist's ability to turn a phrase to delight those of us who prefer non-fiction. Highly recommended to all patriots and those whose lack an understanding of our nation's history - nay, our nation's meaning.
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Summary: Absolutely fascinating
Review: Absolutely fascinating accounts of the human side of an extraordinary period of time in history. How does a nation rebel from the concept of centralized government and then try to set up a centralized government? These great but flawed leaders try to solve this paradox, but what they really did -- thankfully -- is create enough stability so that we could continue to manage this paradox today. It's what makes America great -- and unique. And this book allows you to delve into how it all got started.
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Summary: The Down and Dirty of the Revolutionary Era
Review: Ellis has given us the opportunity to know the Founding Brothers like we know our contemporary friends and co-workers. Using little known (at least to me) episodes in their lives he illuminates their character. Ellis tells the story of a dinner party deal making session that resulted in the District of Columbia being where it is. He tells the story of the Burr/Hamilton duel so well you will feel as though you were there and, in the process, explains why it was probably a good thing for the Republic that these two political careers ended prematurely. Ellis also fully explores the friendship, estrangement and reconcilliation of Jefferson and Adams. In the process he introduced me to the subtle implications of the political theory behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In short, Ellis compares and contrasts the competitive philosophical foundations of these two documents and the implications of that competition on much of what has followed in American History. Finally, Ellis clearly points out how "The Revolutionary Generation" ignored the elephant in the house and why. Slavery was a problem they recognized as beyond their ability to solve. With the notable exceptions of Franklin (at the very end of his life) and Washington (in his Last Will and Testament), the "Founding Brothers" at a minimum dodged the issue. There is much more but you should read the book to really appreciate it.
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Summary: An astounding introduction to our founding fathers/brothers
Review: I have always had a desire to study the American Revolution and the men and women who fought and/or shaped the political landscape. After finishing "Founding Brothers," I now have a good idea of what to expect and which characters will interest me the most (Jefferson, Adams, and Thomas Paine, whom the author seems to rather dislike.) This is not an in-depth study of the founding brothers. You would need to read multiple volumes of biographies, letters, and historical works to fully understand them. Instead, it is a collection of vignettes that are able to convey the founders personalities and ideologies to the reader. Focusing on the six events, Ellis is able to show us the men behind the story. These seven men, Adams, Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, and Burr, were responsible for the shaping of our country more than any other man or woman. Ellis also explains the reasons for the event and its future implications on the fledgling nation. Highly Recommended
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Summary: How to Understand the Revolution
Review: Just finished the book and wish to share my thoughts. If you have a very sound historical perspective, but lots of unanswered questions about the "Founding Fathers" (Ellis, as well as Jefferson, demonstrate conclusively that they were brothers, not fathers), this is an incredible distillation of the issues and events that followed the Revolution. This book is not for the faint of heart nor novices in critical historical perspective. Nor is it for the Ph.D candidates who want only original source materials and a "fresh" perspective. It is also not for those who need simple sentence structure -- much of the elegant language is rather obtuse, when judged by USA Today standards. But if you are up to the challenge, this is an extraordinary book. Hamilton, Jefferson, Burr, Adams, Washington, Franklin, Madison, slavery, Federalists, Republicans, the Constitution -- this book presents a great exploration of the issues those men faced from their perspective, not just how our world now interprets their actions. I could not put it down. I recommend it highly.
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Summary: Read This Book!
Review: Founding Brothers is an excellent book. Don't be fooled by any negative reviews. Even the most critical of reviews should give it at least three stars. If you're looking for mini-bios about the men pictured on the cover, you will not find it in this book. The book covers the early days of our country like none other I have read. Through 6 important events spanning the first 40 years of our country after the ratification of the Constitution. By focusing on events rather than people, Mr. Ellis can give us a more in depth, objective view of history. For instance, he doesn't take sides in the Burr-Hamilton duel. He tries to present different aspects of these revolutionary personalities. I would recommend this book to anyone who even has the smallest interest in this time in history. The book reads easy. You'll feel like you actually spent your time wisely after finishing Founding Brothers.
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