Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

Exceptionally well written and researched book about the first few decades of our country. Characters are brought to life showing the political and personal struggles they went thru. Similarities of the divisiveness of the two main political parties is strikingly similar to todays situation.

Ellis writes so, so very well. In fact, he writes in such a way as to make you glad you're reading his distillation of certain texts than the documents themselves. And that, readers, is a GIFT. His characerizations are bold, poetic, and remarkably insightful. I couldn't put it down!!

It seems that there are certain incidents in one's life that end up being defining moments that shape the future. In FOUNDING BROTHERS, Joseph Ellis points out six pivotal moments in the years following the American Revolution that shaped the United States. But just as importantly, they illustrate the character and motivations of the founding fathers.

Some of the scenes are better written than others. The chapter about the Hamilton/Burr duel is probably the best of the bunch, with the writing reflective of the emotion and chaos that surrounded that morning in New Jersey. Others, like the secret dinner that determined the location of the U.S. Capitol and the fate of Hamilton's financial dealings have more murky prose, making the read more of a slog.

Ultimately, what is most interesting--and I think Ellis' point in writing the book--is how differently each of the founders interpreted the rationale for the Revolution and how those difference in rationale impacted how the new Country was shaped in the subsequent decades. While this is most explicit in the final chapter detailing the hot and cold friendship of Adams and Jefferson, each chapter seems to highlight that each of these leaders took away from the Revolution a different lesson for governance.

This is an important book and well worth reading if you have any interest at all in how the founders came to form the philosophy of government that is still the basis for our nation today. Just be forewarned that many parts of the book are not light reading and sometimes the prose is overly dense.

Founding Brothers fails to achieve its goal of describing six exploits that influenced American history in an interesting and captivating way. Joseph Ellis, in this book, utilizes an over extensive vocabulary that only blurs his major points. In Founding Brothers, Ellis becomes extremely repetitive with his major arguments, which are that the founding generation, and especially its most influential politicians, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, the revolution survived because it was collectivistic and succeeded through the diversity of the people involved, all politicians knew each other, they avoided slavery to keep the fragile Union together, and that the politicians knew they were making history so they posed for the future. Founding Brothers features six events which came to shape American politics in the most important decade in American history, the 1790's. The first of these six events was the "Interview at Weehawken," which was a duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton after which Hamilton died and Burr became a villain in the duel that ended all duels. Another event was the dinner party hosted by Thomas Jefferson in which Hamilton and James Madison decided to move the capital to Potomac in exchange for Madison gathering enough votes for the Assumption Bill to be passed through Congress. Joseph Ellis then describes the silence where two Quakers delegations decide to send a petition to end slavery to Congress with Benjamin Franklin signing it. However, Madison managed to convince Congress to enact a silence, meaning Congress would not interfere with the issue of slavery and when the Quakers sent another petition in 1792 it was ignored. The fourth event was the farewell when George Washington left politics after serving two terms as president and left his famous Farewell Address in which he left valuable advice for the coming presidents about foreign entanglements and soon after he left presidential office the greatest patriot in American history died. The fifth event was the collaborators in which Jefferson and Adams friendship became strained and they both turned toward different collaborators, Abigail Adams for Adams and Madison for Jefferson, and did not communicate with one another for eight years. The final event was the friendship in which the famous odd couple, Jefferson and Adams, renewed their friendship in the form of a 158 letter correspondence and both died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Founding Brothers is a mediocre book at best which fails to maintain the readers interest in American politics in the 1790's, because of Ellis's confusing vocabulary, repetition that bores, overanalyzing style, inability to stay on topic, obvious bias, and lengthy sentence structure that leaves the reader wishing they hadn't wasted the twenty six dollars.

This book is a fine public service for those readers who do not have the time to read massive history texts.
The author does a great job of creating distinct (apparently realistic) impressions of what each Founder was like as a person and where he stood as an politician. You may not look at their likenesses in the same way again.