|
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (平装)
by Joseph J. Ellis
| Category:
American history, Biography |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
MSL price:
¥ 148.00
[ Shop incentives ]
|
| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A masterpiece biography of the founders of America from one of America's top historians. |
| If you want us to help you with the right titles you're looking for, or to make reading recommendations based on your needs, please contact our consultants. |
|
| |
AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 14 items |
|
|
Gordon S. Wood (The New York Review of Books) (MSL quote), USA
<>
Founding Brothers is a wonderful book, one of the best... on the Founders ever written... Ellis has established himself as the Founders’ historian for our time.
|
|
|
Business Week (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
Lucid... Ellis has such command of the subject matter that it feels fresh, particularly as he segues from psychological to political, even to physical analysis... Ellis’s storytelling helps us more fully hear the Brothers’ voices. |
|
|
The New York Times Book Review (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
A splendid book - humane, learned, written with flair and radiant with a calm intelligence and wit.
|
|
|
The New York Times (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
Lively and illuminating... leaves the reader with a visceral sense of a formative era in American life. |
|
|
Chicago Tribune (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
Masterful... Fascinating... Ellis is an elegant stylist... [He] captures the passion the founders brought to the revolutionary project... [A] very fine book.
|
|
|
C. Ebeling (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
After ancient Rome, there is only one instance in Western history of a successful, sustainable republic governed by elected officials coming into being on its own. That would be America and its achievement still invites wonder. In Founding Brothers, Joseph Ellis peers in at its formative years following the ratification of the Constitution, to look at the personalities involved and the deeds done that made a nation. His chief cast of characters is comprised of Washington, John and Abigail Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Ben Franklin, Burr and Hamilton. All of them were of a generation (hence "brothers" and not "fathers" in the title), knew each other, shared goals and were hyperaware that the eyes of the world were upon them. Their objectives often clashed, but when it came to the bigger picture, they (mostly) bargained together.
Ellis begins his exploration by looking at an instance when things did not go well at all: the duel between Burr and Hamilton. In many ways, it illustrates those clashing objectives and colorful personalities, and it also reveals in its anomalous circumstances that America had better ways of handling a disagreement than invoking the aristocratic, Old World and illegal code duello. It makes the perfect bookend with the last chapter, in which Jefferson and Adams are seen patching up an old hurtful feud and articulating their ideas and friendship through an extraordinary output of correspondence deep into old age (they would die 5 hours apart nearly 50 years to the day of Independence). In between, Ellis revisits the dinner party hosted by Jefferson at which Madison and Hamilton brokered the deal by which the states-rights advocates (largely the south) turned over their debt to the Federal government and in turn, the nation's capital was sited on the Potomac; he looks at Washington's announcement that he would not seek another term, thus weaning America from patriarchy into new, unchartered waters of elected politicians and political parties; and the one failure of the generation, to resolve the problem of slavery thus leaving it to be done in by the Civil War. It is astounding how much of what was put in place between 1789 and 1809 is what we live with today. Ellis never says so, but you can see the footprint for the blue state/red state divide right there at the beginning.
This book is highly readable, often funny, especially when it is profiling the Adams, a marriage of true soul mates. Ellis is a gifted writer whose evident fondness for his subjects does not interfere with a clear-eyed, psychologically astute profile of each. I can't say enough about this book. |
|
|
Magellan (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
This was the second book I'd read by Ellis, having read his book on Washington, His Excellency, first. So far Ellis's brief but still well researched and very readable bios of the founding generation are the best I've encountered. At less than 270 pages usually, they bridge the gap between, say, the 30-70 page bios of the founding fathers that you can find in Encarta or the Britannica, and the 1000+ page multivolume works by other authors that are mostly of interest to professional scholars. Most of us probably don't have the time to get through a work like that, but Ellis's brief books are a great way to get some background in the subject.
Ellis has a lively and engaging style, so they're all well written, and the books convey a lot of information in fairly brief format. If you want, you can get your feet wet with his books and then go on to the other books on founding fathers by McCullough, Chernow, and others that are usually more like 500-600 pages long, not to mention the huge multivolume works.
By the way, one of the most interesting aspects of the book is a detailed discussion of the duel between Hamilton and Burr, using a number of sources of information and accounts from several of the participants. Ellis uses the duel to segue into not only the personal quarrel between Burr and Hamilton, but why Hamilton thought Burr was such a threat. He discusses how the dueling tradition related to the gentleman's code of behavior, and other interesting topics.
For example, Ellis points out that the vast majority of duels ended with no one being hurt, with the participants choosing to fire into the air or wide of the mark, rather than try to actually kill their opponent. Having gotten that far in the whole elaborate ceremony of the duel, it was usually felt that the requirements of honor had been met. This was known as "deloping." But whichever way you decide to go, good luck and happy reading.
|
|
|
D. Thurlow (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
Joseph Ellis's Founding Brothers performs two vital services for the general reader. First, in highly readable prose, he provides deft portraits of selected founding fathers not as mythological giants, but as the successful practicing politicians they had to be to make the new American Government work. Second, Ellis makes clear that the success of the new nation was by no means inevitable; the ability of the founding brothers to make timely compromises was crucial to building a functioning central government.
Ellis analyzes six different episodes in the decade after 1790, each of which contributed to the building of a consensus on how the new nation would evolve. Ellis reminds us that success at that time was not assured, and only looks inevitable in retrospect. The "founding brothers" of the title are George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr. Each was prominent in the national life of the fledging republic, and with the exception of Burr, each left behind a legacy of remarkable public service.
This book is highly recommended to the general reader with an interest in how the new American Republic worked the compromises of practical politics that allowed it to survive the contradictions between the idealism that was its founding premise and the reality of accomodating people with competing interests within a stable government.
|
|
|
Anette Comisky (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
In Joseph J. Ellis' Founding Brothers, Ellis succeeds in portraying the revolutionary generation of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and more as real men whose interesting personalities and lives warrant their legendary, larger than life status.
Ellis could of wrote this book as a series of chronological events starting from the late 1790's and extending to the early 19th century. It would have been an a slightly interesting, very informative read that many scholars and amateur historians would of enjoyed. Instead of writing like that, though, Ellis decided to highlight six events in the post revolutionary era that characterized the main founding fathers. This style works to great effect, as the reader doesn't have to drudge through boring facts and events to get a feel for these people's character.
That is the real beauty of this work- the characters are so intriguing, the events so compelling, that often the reader forgets that that what they're reading is all factual. The history of these men and the events that transpired is so compelling that reading it in a textbook doesn't quite do these men's stories justice.
One story that particularly highlights this is "The Duel," which focuses, naturally, on the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Both of the men's characters are analyzed in depth and how their respective personality traits contributed to the duel. After reading that particular story, the reader will realize that yes, Aaron Burr was that manipulative, and Alexander Hamilton was that stubborn.
The stories are compelling and exciting to read- but that's not to say this book is a light, summer afternoon easy read. It is far from that. Each paragraph contains so much well articulated and concisely stated information; it is easy to read a whole page without really comprehending all that Ellis is saying. When one does carefully read and digest all of the information, they will find that their understanding of the founding fathers, and in turn the revolutionary era, will increase ten fold.
However, some of the information is, if not unnecessary, a little on the slow side. In "The Silence," Ellis writes about two Quaker delegates who called for an end to the slave trade 70 years before the civil war. The story sounds interesting- and, for the most part, it is. Some of the really technical information about the slave trade and the constitution, though, will only please some scholarly history buffs- most of the amateur historians reading the book will be slightly bored.
So, Founding Brothers is an eloquently written, interesting book. If one wants a feel for the personalities of the founding fathers or is just interested in an exciting history book, Ellis's work fits the bill.
|
|
|
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-22 00:00>
Founding Brothers is best suited for those who have previously read histories of the American Revolution and Post-revolutionary eras and want to make sense of the heated and often angry political arguments of the early years of the United States. Through Ellis' portrayal of a series of issues and the associated personalities, this book is primarily a study of the Federalists versus the Jeffersonian or Republican view of the role of government with the former calling for a strong Federal government (especially the Executive branch) and the latter a more decentralized power structure based on States Rights.
The assumption of the individual States debts, slavery, the location of the capital, suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion, and military institutions were domestic issues that the arguments centered upon. Of course, compromises took place such as the locating of the Capital on the Potomac bordering Virginia in exchange for Hamilton's debt assumption scheme. The slavery issue was particularly interesting (and tragic) and Congress in those years took on a role later belonging to the Supreme Court in which it essentially ruled that slavery was a State, not National or Congressional matter to resolve.
An analysis of Burr and Hamilton's conflict results in Ellis' conclusion that our governmental institutions and traditions were still immature and the critical perception of honor led to their duel while in later years their conflict would have stayed within the political arena. A key foreign policy issue was whether the new Revolutionary nation should align with France or stay neutral which meant reaching an accommodation with Great Britain. The Jeffersonians, not wanting to lose the fire and ideals of 1776, wished to tilt or align with France. The Federalists, more realistic, angered their opponents by signing a seemingly unfavorable peace treaty with Great Britain which Ellis believes allowed the United States to conserve its growing strength and avoid entanglement in European affairs.
When looking at today's America, it appears that the Federalist view generally prevailed, although Jefferson has been idealized as the basis of our freedoms. Ellis seems to favor the Federalists, particularly Washington and John Adams, as being more level-headed and perceptive of what makes a great nation. Although personalities such as Washington, Jefferson, John and Abigail Adams, Hamilton, Franklin, and Madison are profiled, Founding Brothers is a book of ideas, not biographical profiles. It is not the final word, but is an excellent vehicle for readers wanting to understand the early history of the United States beyond the historical facts.
|
|
|
|
1 2 | Total 2 pages 14 items |
|
|
|
|
|
|
