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George Washington claimed that anyone who attempted to provide an
accurate account of the war for independence would be accused of
writing fiction. At the time, no one called it the "American
Revolution": former colonists still regarded themselves as
Virginians or Pennsylvanians, not Americans, while John Adams
insisted that the British were the real revolutionaries, for
attempting to impose radical change without their colonists'
consent. With The Cause, Ellis takes a fresh look at the events
between 1773 and 1783, recovering a war more brutal than any in
American history save the Civil War and discovering a strange breed
of "prudent" revolutionaries, whose prudence proved wise yet tragic
when it came to slavery, the original sin that still haunts
America. Written with flair and drama, The Cause brings together a
cast of familiar and forgotten characters who, taken together,
challenge the story we have long told ourselves about our origins
as a people and a nation.
A fresh look at this astute, likably quirky statesman, by the
author of the Pulitzer Award-winning Founding Brothers and the
National Book Award winning American Sphinx.
An authoritative, accessible guide to the figures who shaped a
nation
How did upstart colonists solidify the ideas celebrated in the
Declaration of Independence and defeat the powerful British army?
How did thinkers from disparate backgrounds shape a government that
transformed modern politics? The Founding Fathers explains how,
putting valuable information on this historic period at your
fingertips--straight from one of the most trusted sources of
information around the globe.
This comprehensive guide takes a compelling look at prominent
statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas
Paine, and George Washington and lesser-known but influential
leaders such as Samuel Chase, Charles Pinckney, and others.
Alphabetized for easy reference, it also offers discussions of key
issues, including slavery, the separation of powers, the
presidency, and Deism and Christianity; events, such as the
American Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, and the Louisiana
Purchase; and documents, including the Constitution and the Bill of
Rights. Every special essay and concise entry--from ""Abigail
Adams"" to ""George Wythe""--promotes the deeper understanding of
the personalities, issues, and events that only Encyclop?dia
Britannica can provide.
The book's balanced, fact-based coverage of the Founding Fathers is
especially relevant today, when differing interpretations of their
intent are used in debates over current policies. The Founding
Fathers is the ideal resource for anyone looking to hone his or her
knowledge of the fascinating figures who wrote the first chapter of
U.S. history.
For Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis, The Cause
marks the culmination of a lifetime of engagement with the founding
era, completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding
Brothers. Here Ellis, countering popular histories that romanticize
the "Spirit of '76," demonstrates through "evocative profiles of
British loyalists, slaves, Native Americans and soldiers uncertain
of what was being founded" (Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune)
that the rebels fought not for a nation but under the mantle of
"The Cause," a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle all but
destined to give rise to the warring factions of later American
history. Combining action-packed tales of North American military
campaigns with characteristically trenchant insight, The Cause
"deftly foreshadows all the issues that would complicate America's
trajectory" (Richard Stengel, New York Times Book Review), forcing
us to finally reconsider the story we have long told ourselves
about our origins-as a people, and as a nation. "At the
intersection of his expertise and our need for coherence about our
national founding arrives historian Joseph J. Ellis. . . . Ellis is
no apologist, but he is a chronicler of the entire revolution, its
best aspirations, its worst contradictions, and its ongoing
dilemmas." -Hugh Hewitt, Washington Post
"A wonderfully vivid account of the momentous era they lived
through, underscoring the chaotic, often improvisatory
circumstances that attended the birth of the fledgling nation and
the hardships of daily life." -Michiko Kakutani, New York Times In
1762, John Adams penned a flirtatious note to "Miss Adorable," the
17-year-old Abigail Smith. In 1801, Abigail wrote to wish her
husband John a safe journey as he headed home to Quincy after
serving as president of the nation he helped create. The letters
that span these nearly forty years form the most significant
correspondence-and reveal one of the most intriguing and inspiring
partnerships-in American history. As a pivotal player in the
American Revolution and the early republic, John had a front-row
seat at critical moments in the creation of the United States, from
the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to negotiating
peace with Great Britain to serving as the first vice president and
second president under the U.S. Constitution. Separated more often
than they were together during this founding era, John and Abigail
shared their lives through letters that each addressed to "My
Dearest Friend," debating ideas and commenting on current events
while attending to the concerns of raising their children
(including a future president). Full of keen observations and
articulate commentary on world events, these letters are also
remarkably intimate. This new collection-including some letters
never before published-invites readers to experience the founding
of a nation and the partnership of two strong individuals, in their
own words. This is history at its most authentic and most engaging.
In this landmark work of history, the National Book Award—winning author of American Sphinx explores 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 here as Founding Brothers–combined the ideals of the Declaration of Independence with the content of the Constitution to create the practical workings of our government. Through an analysis of six fascinating episodes–Hamilton and Burr’s deadly duel, Washington’s precedent-setting Farewell Address, Adams’ administration and political partnership with his wife, the debate about where to place the capital, Franklin’s attempt to force Congress to confront the issue of slavery and Madison’s attempts to block him, and Jefferson and Adams’ famous correspondence–Founding Brothers brings to life the vital issues and personalities from the most important decade in our nation’s history.
For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight--and not only during his active political career. After 1809, his longed-for retirement was compromised by a steady stream of guests and tourists who made of his estate at Monticello a virtual hotel, as well as by more than one thousand letters per year, most from strangers, which he insisted on answering personally. In his twilight years Jefferson was already taking on the luster of a national icon, which was polished off by his auspicious death (on July 4, 1896); and in the subsequent seventeen decades of his celebrity--now verging, thanks to virulent revisionists and television documentaries, on notoriety--has been inflated beyond recognition of the original person.
For the historian Joseph J. Ellis, the experience of writing about Jefferson was "as if a pathologist, just about to begin an autopsy, has discovered that the body on the operating table was still breathing." In American Sphinx, Ellis sifts the facts shrewdly from the legends and the rumors, treading a path between vilification and hero worship in order to formulate a plausible portrait of the man who still today "hover[s] over the political scene like one of those dirigibles cruising above a crowded football stadium, flashing words of inspiration to both teams." For, at the grass roots, Jefferson is no longer liberal or conservative, agrarian or industrialist, pro- or anti-slavery, privileged or populist. He is all things to all people. His own obliviousness to incompatible convictions within himself (which left him deaf to most forms of irony) has leaked out into the world at large--a world determined to idolize him despite his foibles.
From Ellis we learn that Jefferson sang incessantly under his breath; that he delivered only two public speeches in eight years as president, while spending ten hours a day at his writing desk; that sometimes his political sensibilities collided with his domestic agenda, as when he ordered an expensive piano from London during a boycott (and pledged to "keep it in storage"). We see him relishing such projects as the nailery at Monticello that allowed him to interact with his slaves more palatably, as pseudo-employer to pseudo-employees. We grow convinced that he preferred to meet his lovers in the rarefied region of his mind rather than in the actual bedchamber. We watch him exhibiting both great depth and great shallowness, combining massive learning with extraordinary naïveté, piercing insights with self-deception on the grandest scale. We understand why we should neither beatify him nor consign him to the rubbish heap of history, though we are by no means required to stop loving him. He is Thomas Jefferson, after all--our very own sphinx.
A "Washington Post" Notable Book
A "Kirkus Reviews" Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
The summer months of 1776 witnessed the most consequential events
in the story of our country's founding. While the thirteen colonies
came together and agreed to secede from the British Empire, the
British were dispatching the largest armada ever to cross the
Atlantic to crush the rebellion in the cradle. The Continental
Congress and the Continental Army were forced to make decisions on
the run, improvising as history congealed around them.
In a brilliant and seamless narrative, Ellis meticulously examines
the most influential figures in this propitious moment, including
George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin,
and Britain's Admiral Lord Richard and General William Howe. He
weaves together the political and military experiences as two sides
of a single story, and shows how events on one front influenced
outcomes on the other.
The author of seven highly acclaimed books, Joseph J. Ellis has
crafted a landmark biography that brings to life in all his
complexity the most important and perhaps least understood figure
in American history, George Washington. With his careful attention
to detail and his lyrical prose, Ellis has set a new standard for
biography.
Drawing from the newly" catalogued Washington papers at the
University of Virginia, Joseph Ellis paints a full portrait of
George Washington's life and career-from his military years through
his two terms as president. Ellis illuminates the difficulties the
first executive confronted as he worked to keep the emerging
country united in the face of adversarial factions. He richly
details Washington's private life and illustrates the ways in which
it influenced his public persona. Through Ellis's artful narration,
we look inside Washington's" marriage and his subsequent entrance
into the upper echelons of Virginia's plantation society. We come
to understand that it was by managing his own" large debts to
British merchants that he experienced firsthand the imperiousness
of the British Empire. And we watch the evolution of his attitude
toward slavery, which led to his emancipating his own slaves in his
will. Throughout, Ellis peels back the layers of myth and uncovers
for us Washington in the context of eighteenth-century America,
allowing us to comprehend the magnitude of his accomplishments and
the character of his spirit and mind."
When Washington died in 1799, Ellis tells us," he was eulogized as
"first in the hearts of his countrymen." Since then, however, his
image has been chisled onto Mount Rushmore and printed on the
dollar bill. He is on ourlandscape and in our wallets but not,
Ellis argues, in our hearts. Ellis strips away the ivy and legend
that have grown up over the Washington statue and recovers the
flesh-and-blood man in all his passionate and fully human prowess.
In the pantheon of our republic's founders, there were many
outstanding individuals. And yet each of them-Franklin, Hamilton,
Adams, Jefferson, and Madison- acknowledged Washington to be his
superior, the only indispensable figure, the one and only "His
Excellency." Both physically and politically, Washington towered
over his peers for reasons this book elucidates. "His Excellency is
a full, glorious, and multifaceted portrait of the man behind our
country's genesis, sure to become the authoritative biography of
George Washington for many decades.
"From the Hardcover edition.
With vivid detail Your Loving Son, Philip takes us back to the
lives of the GIs in Germany at the end of World War II. Philip
Herzig, a 19-year-old studying at Princeton University, was drafted
in 1944. For the next two years he wrote home every other day,
describing his life, first in boot camp, then in Germany, first in
battle duty and then in the army of occupation. Philip describes
everything from the guns issued during boot camp to the desolate
surroundings of bombed out Germany. He even spends a day at the
Nuremburg Trials. His mature observations about the German
personality, about the GIs fraternizing with German frauleins-the
enemy-and politics in the US are all fascinating and honest. At the
same time, this boy misses his family greatly and doesn't hesitate
to fantasize about their trips in the family car, the cookouts and
his parents' loving personalities. After showing his sister Pat's
photo around to his friends in his company, he warns her that she
may be getting a lot of phone calls when the war is over. The book
includes photos of Phil and his buddies as they travel around
Germany and their posturing in the mountaintop ruins of Hitler's
headquarters in Berchtesgaden. He describes his surroundings -from
the Riviera when he's on deserved leave after action that led to a
Purple Heart to the house of a family that hosted him in Holland to
the shower the company gets to take in a deserted monastery. As
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph J. Ellis says in his Preface:
"Your Loving Son, Philip is a major memoir from the World War II
generation, distinctive for its literacy, its palpable recovery of
the ordinary routines amidst those extraordinary times, the
distinctive voice of a coming-of-age American man-child who has
been hurled into the greatest military venture of the twentieth
century...Philip is always disarmingly honest, never poses, never
embellishes for effect. This is the genuine article."
Through portraits of four figures—Charles Willson Peale, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, William Dunlap, and Noah Webster—Joseph Ellis provides a unique perspective on the role of culture in post-Revolutionary America, both its high expectations and its frustrations. Each life is fascinating in its own right, and each is used to brightly illuminate the historical context.
John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of our nation and its
second president, spent nearly the last third of his life in
retirement grappling with contradictory views of his place in
history and fearing his reputation would not fare well in the
generations after his death. In an incomplete autobiography, and in
numerous publications and voluminous correspondence with Thomas
Jefferson and many others, he argued and railed against those who
disagreed with him or made little of his contribution to our
country's political foundations. And indeed, future generations did
slight him, elevating Jefferson and Madison to lofty heights with
Washington while Adams remained way back in the second tier. Now,
in a witty, clear, and thoughtful narrative of Adams's later life
at his home in Quincy, Joseph Ellis explores the mind and
personality of the man as well as the earlier events that shaped
his thinking. Readers will discover Adams to be both contentious
and lovable, generous and petty, and the most intellectually
profound of the revolutionary generation, a man who may have
contributed to the earlier underestimates of his role in history,
and whose perspective on America's prospects has relevance for us
today.
Through portraits of four figures-Charles Willson Peale, Hugh Henry
Brackenridge, William Dunlap, and Noah Webster-Joseph Ellis
provides a unique perspective on the role of culture in
post-Revolutionary America, both its high expectations and its
frustrations.
A fresh look at this astute, likably quirky statesman, by the
author of the Pulitzer Award-winning Founding Brothers and the
National Book Award winning American Sphinx. "The most lovable and
most laughable, the warmest and possibly the wisest of the founding
fathers, John Adams knew himself as few men do and preserved his
knowledge in a voluminous correspondence that still resonates.
Ellis has used it with great skill and perception not only to bring
us the man, warts and all, but more importantly to reveal his
extraordinary insights into the problems confronting the founders
that resonate today in the republic they created." Edmund S.
Morgan, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University."
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