Here is a concise, scholarly, yet accessible overview of the
brilliant, flawed, and quarrelsome group of lawyers, politicians,
merchants, military men, and clergy known as "the Founding
Fathers"--who got as close to the ideal of the Platonic
"philosopher-kings" as American or world history has ever seen.
In The Founding Fathers Reconsidered, R. B. Bernstein reveals
Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and the other
founders not as shining demigods but as imperfect human
beings--people much like us--who nevertheless achieved political
greatness. They emerge here as men who sought to transcend their
intellectual world even as they were bound by its limits, men who
strove to lead the new nation even as they had to defer to the
great body of the people and learn with them the possibilities and
limitations of politics. Bernstein deftly traces the dynamic forces
that molded these men and their contemporaries as British colonists
in North America and as intellectual citizens of the Atlantic
civilization's Age of Enlightenment. He analyzes the American
Revolution, the framing and adoption of state and federal
constitutions, and the key concepts and problems--among them
independence, federalism, equality, slavery, and the separation of
church and state--that both shaped and circumscribed the founders'
achievements as the United States sought its place in the world.
Finally, he charts the shifting reputations of the founders, both
as a group and as individuals, and examining the specific uses to
which interpreters of the Constitution have put the Founding
Fathers, along with the problems besetting this "jurisprudence of
original intent."
A masterly blend of old and new scholarship, brimming with apt
description and insightful analysis, this book offers a persuasive
account of how the Founding Fathers were formed, what they did, and
how generations of Americans have viewed them.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(2)
