Download or read book The Last Founding Father written by Harlow Giles Unger and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author, the larger than life story of America's fifth president, who transformed a small, fragile nation into a powerful empire In this compelling biography, award-winning author Harlow Giles Unger reveals the epic story of James Monroe (1758-1831)-the last of America's Founding Fathers-who transformed a small, fragile nation beset by enemies into a powerful empire stretching "from sea to shining sea." Like David McCullough's John Adams and Jon Meacham's American Lion, The Last Founding Father is both a superb read and stellar scholarship-action-filled history in the grand tradition.
Download or read book Founding Fathers written by Encyclopaedia Britannica and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2007-08-03 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains alphabetically arranged entries that provide information on the Founding Fathers, their actions, and their intentions in writing the U.S. Constitution.
Download or read book Founding Fathers written by K. M. Kostyal and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2014 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kostyal tells the story of the great American heroes who created the Declaration of Independence, fought the American Revolution, shaped the US Constitution--and changed the world. The era's dramatic events, from the riotous streets in Boston to the unlikely victory at Saratoga, are punctuated with lavishly illustrated biographies of the key founders--Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison--who shaped the very idea of America. An introduction and ten expertly-rendered National Geographic maps round out this ideal gift for history buff and student alike. Filled with beautiful illustrations, maps, and inspired accounts from the men and women who made America, Founding Fathers brings the birth of the new nation to light.
Download or read book Houses of the Founding Fathers written by Hugh Howard and published by Artisan Books. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking tour of the eighteenth-century houses belonging to some of America's most important early leaders looks inside the domestic world of the Founding Fathers to chronicle the private lives, families, culture, interests, and aspirations of Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and others in each of the original thirteen colonies.
Download or read book George Washington written by David O. Stewart and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating and illuminating account of how George Washington became the dominant force in the creation of the United States of America, from award-winning author David O. Stewart “An outstanding biography . . . [George Washington] has a narrative drive such a life deserves.”—The Wall Street Journal Washington's rise constitutes one of the greatest self-reinventions in history. In his mid-twenties, this third son of a modest Virginia planter had ruined his own military career thanks to an outrageous ego. But by his mid-forties, that headstrong, unwise young man had evolved into an unassailable leader chosen as the commander in chief of the fledgling Continental Army. By his mid-fifties, he was unanimously elected the nation's first president. How did Washington emerge from the wilderness to become the central founder of the United States of America? In this remarkable new portrait, award-winning historian David O. Stewart unveils the political education that made Washington a master politician—and America's most essential leader. From Virginia's House of Burgesses, where Washington mastered the craft and timing of a practicing politician, to his management of local government as a justice of the Fairfax County Court to his eventual role in the Second Continental Congress and his grueling generalship in the American Revolution, Washington perfected the art of governing and service, earned trust, and built bridges. The lessons in leadership he absorbed along the way would be invaluable during the early years of the republic as he fought to unify the new nation.
Download or read book John Jay written by Walter Stahr and published by Diversion Publishing Corp.. This book was released on 2012-09-13 with total page 611 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times–bestselling author of Seward and Stanton comes the definitive biography of John Jay: “Wonderful” (Walter Isaacson, New York Times–bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci). John Jay is central to the early history of the American Republic. Drawing on substantial new material, renowned biographer Walter Stahr has written a full and highly readable portrait of both the public and private man—one of the most prominent figures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. “The greatest founders—such as Washington and Jefferson—have kept even the greatest of the second tier of the nation’s founding generation in the shadows. But now John Jay, arguably the most important of this second group, has found an admiring, skilled student in Stahr . . . Since the last biography of Jay appeared 60 years ago, a mountain of new knowledge about the early nation has piled up, and Stahr uses it all with confidence and critical detachment. Jay had a remarkable career. He was president of the Continental Congress, secretary of foreign affairs, a negotiator of the treaty that won the United States its independence in 1783, one of three authors of The Federalist Papers, first chief justice of the Supreme Court and governor of his native New York . . . [Stahr] places Jay once again in the company of America’s greatest statesmen, where he unquestionably belongs.” —Publishers Weekly “Even-handed . . . Riveting on the matter of negotiating tactics, as practiced by Adams, Jay and Franklin.” —The Economist “Stahr has not only given us a meticulous study of the life of John Jay, but one very much in the spirit of the man . . . Thorough, fair, consistently intelligent, and presented with the most scrupulous accuracy. Let us hope that this book helps to retrieve Jay from the relative obscurity to which he has been unfairly consigned.” —Ron Chernow, author of Alexander Hamilton
Download or read book Fears of a Setting Sun written by Dennis C. Rasmussen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The surprising story of how George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson came to despair for the future of the nation they had created Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them—including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson—came to deem America’s constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. Fears of a Setting Sun is the first book to tell the fascinating and too-little-known story of the founders’ disillusionment. As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders’ pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America’s political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America’s constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not. As much as Americans today may worry about their country’s future, Rasmussen reveals, the founders faced even graver problems and harbored even deeper misgivings. A vividly written account of a chapter of American history that has received too little attention, Fears of a Setting Sun will change the way that you look at the American founding, the Constitution, and indeed the United States itself.
Download or read book The Failure of the Founding Fathers written by Bruce Ackerman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2005-10-28 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on seven years of archival research, the book describes previously unknown aspects of the electoral college crisis of 1800, presenting a revised understanding of the early days of two great institutions that continue to have a major impact on American history: the plebiscitarian presidency and a Supreme Court that struggles to put the presidency's claims of a popular mandate into constitutional perspective. Through close studies of two Supreme Court cases, Ackerman shows how the court integrated Federalist and Republican themes into the living Constitution of the early republic.
Download or read book The Lost Founding Father written by William J. Cooper and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A vivid and convincing account of one of the most significant—but too often overlooked—figures in our history.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion Overshadowed by both his brilliant father and the brash and bold Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams has long been dismissed as an aloof intellectual. Viciously assailed by Jackson and his populist mobs for being both slippery and effete, Adams nevertheless recovered from defeat in 1828’s presidential election to lead the nation as a lonely Massachusetts congressman in the fight against slavery. Award-winning historian William J. Cooper’s “balanced, wellsourced, and accessible work” (Publishers Weekly) demonstrates that Adams should be considered our lost Founding Father, his moral and political vision the final link to the visionaries who created our nation. With his heroic arguments in the Amistad trial forever memorialized, Adams stood strong against the expansion of slavery that would send the nation hurtling into war. This “well-crafted” (William McFeely) biography reveals Adams to be one of the most battered, but courageous and inspirational, politicians in American history.
Download or read book American Dialogue written by Joseph J. Ellis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning author of Founding Brothers and The Quartet now gives us a deeply insightful examination of the relevance of the views of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams to some of the most divisive issues in America today. The story of history is a ceaseless conversation between past and present, and in American Dialogue Joseph J. Ellis focuses the conversation on the often-asked question "What would the Founding Fathers think?" He examines four of our most seminal historical figures through the prism of particular topics, using the perspective of the present to shed light on their views and, in turn, to make clear how their now centuries-old ideas illuminate the disturbing impasse of today's political conflicts. He discusses Jefferson and the issue of racism, Adams and the specter of economic inequality, Washington and American imperialism, Madison and the doctrine of original intent. Through these juxtapositions--and in his hallmark dramatic and compelling narrative voice--Ellis illuminates the obstacles and pitfalls paralyzing contemporary discussions of these fundamentally important issues.
Download or read book Science and the Founding Fathers written by I. Bernard Cohen and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1997 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Jefferson was the only president who could read and understand Newton's Principia. Benjamin Franklin is credited with establishing the science of electricity. John Adams had the finest education in science that the new country could provide, including "Pnewmaticks, Hydrostaticks, Mechanicks, Staticks, Opticks." James Madison, chief architect of the Constitution, peppered his Federalist Papers with references to physics, chemistry, and the life sciences. For these men science was an integral part of life--including political life. This is the story of their scientific education and of how they employed that knowledge in shaping the political issues of the day, incorporating scientific reasoning into the Constitution.
Download or read book The Founding Fathers Reconsidered written by R. B. Bernstein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is a vividly written and compact 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.
Download or read book The Founding Fathers written by Richard B. Bernstein and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This concise and elegant contribution to the Very Short Introduction series reintroduces the history that shaped the founding fathers, the history that they made, and what history has made of them. The book provides a context within which to explore the world of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton, as well as their complex and still-controversial achievements and legacies.
Download or read book The Founding Fathers written by Jonah Winter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this eye-opening look at our Founding Fathers that is full of fun facts and lively artwork, it seems that Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and their cohorts sometimes agreed on NOTHING…except the thing that mattered most: creating the finest constitution in world history, for the brand-new United States of America. Tall! Short! A scientist! A dancer! A farmer! A soldier! The founding fathers had no idea they would ever be called the "founding Fathers," and furthermore they could not even agree exactly on what they were founding! Should America declare independence from Britain? "Yes!" shouted some. "No!" shouted others. "Could you repeat the question?" shouted the ones who either hadn't been listening or else were off in France having fun, dancin' the night away. Slave owners, abolitionists, soldiers, doctors, philosophers, bankers, angry letter-writers—the men we now call America's Founding Fathers were a motley bunch of characters who fought a lot and made mistakes and just happened to invent a whole new kind of nation. And now here they are, together again, in an exclusive engagement!
Download or read book The World of the Founding Fathers written by Saul Kussiel Padover and published by New York : T. Yoseloff. This book was released on 1960 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of the outstanding authorities on the early days of the Republic, Saul K. Padover offers in this volume a generous sampling of the letters, essays, speeches, discourses, and personal documents--many of them previously unpublished--of the men who made America. Included are extensive selections from the papers and speeches of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. There are also copious extracts from the private and public utterances of secondary, but important, figures of the founding days--Samuel Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Patrick Henry, John Dickinson, Oliver Ellsworth, William Paterson, Benjamin Rush, George Wythe, and many others. A number of the speeches made at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 are given in full, and several of the important debates are reproduced. John Dickinson's Letters from an American Farmer in Pennsylvania appear in these pages as well as many of Alexander Hamilton's famous and brief opinions. Also included are John Hancock's speech on the Boston Massacre; Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia; James Madison's Memorial against Religious Assessments; two of the most important of John Marshall's Supreme Court decisions (Marbury vs. Madison and McCulloch vs. Maryland); Robert Morris' Letters on Finance; John Taylor's paper On Aristocracy, and William Paterson's Plan for a Constitution. Taken together, these writings offer in one volume a complete picture of the thinking, the debate, the legal maneuvers, the compromises, the manners, and the morals of the American nation's earliest days. The book provides a sound basic appreciation of the atmosphere in which the Founding Fathers worked and planned and debated with one another. All the many counter-currents that contributed to the building of the Constitution, the stresses to which the young nation was subjected, the rebellion that continued to seethe, the moral climate of the days--these are all recreated in the speeches and writings of America's first patriots. Dr. Padover has bound the selections together with enlightening commentary that enables the reader to understand the exact circumstances of each utterance and brings the particular work into historical perspective."--Jacket.
Download or read book The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers written by Thomas Fleming and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-14 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling, intimate look at the founders—George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison—and the women who played essential roles in their lives With his usual storytelling flair and unparalleled research, Tom Fleming examines the women who were at the center of the lives of the founding fathers. From hot-tempered Mary Ball Washington to promiscuous Rachel Lavien Hamilton, the founding fathers' mothers powerfully shaped their sons' visions of domestic life. But lovers and wives played more critical roles as friends and often partners in fame. We learn of the youthful Washington's tortured love for the coquettish Sarah Fairfax, wife of his close friend; of Franklin's two "wives," one in London and one in Philadelphia; of Adams's long absences, which required a lonely, deeply unhappy Abigail to keep home and family together for years on end; of Hamilton's adulterous betrayal of his wife and then their reconciliation; of how the brilliant Madison was jilted by a flirtatious fifteen-year-old and went on to marry the effervescent Dolley, who helped make this shy man into a popular president. Jefferson's controversial relationship to Sally Hemings is also examined, with a different vision of where his heart lay. Fleming nimbly takes us through a great deal of early American history, as his founding fathers strove to reconcile the private and public, often beset by a media every bit as gossip seeking and inflammatory as ours today. He offers a powerful look at the challenges women faced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While often brilliant and articulate, the wives of the founding fathers all struggled with the distractions and dangers of frequent childbearing and searing anxiety about infant mortality—Jefferson's wife, Martha, died from complications following labor, as did his daughter. All the more remarkable, then, that these women loomed so large in the lives of their husbands—and, in some cases, their country.
Download or read book Founding Fathers written by Melvin Eustace Bradford and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published : A worthy company. Marlborough, N.H. : Plymouth Rock Foundation, 1982.
