What explains the resurgence of interest in America's Founding Fathers? According to Pulitzer and Bancroft Prize winner Gordon S. Wood, part of the answer resides in our own yearning for disinterested leadership. The ten essays of Revolutionary Characters suggest, however, that the first generation of American leaders shared an 18th-century moral sense that would be impossible to replicate. Though sometimes irreconcilably dissimilar, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and their peers saw themselves as comprising the world's first true meritocracy.
Elegant ... absorbing ... from one of our leading scholars of the American Revolution.
The Washington Post Book World
Shrewdly argued ... powerful. The New York Times
Illuminating ... poignant. The New York Times Book Review
If we can't turn back the clock, at least we can enjoy a master historian's refreshing reassessment of seven men whose legacies live on.... It has the integrity and, yes, the eccentricity of the Founders it celebrates.
Of those writing about the founding fathers, [Gordon Wood] is quite simply the best.
The Philadelphia Inquirer
At several points in this volume, most notably the essays on Washington and the epilogue, Wood argues that the founders contributed unwittingly to a democratic and egalitarian society that they never wanted. This is another point in favor of the history Wood provides in this splendid collection: He relates what he would have us believe, explains much of what was done and leaves us with an ironical appreciation of the founders' achievement.
Bancroft and Pulitzer Prize-winner Wood suggests that behind America's current romance with the founding fathers is a critique of our own leaders, a desire for such capable and disinterested leadership as was offered by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Provocatively, Wood argues that the very egalitarian democracy Washington and Co. created all but guarantees that we will "never again replicate the extraordinary generation of the founders." In 10 essays, most culled from the New York Review of Books and the New Republic, Wood offers miniature portraits of James Madison, Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Paine. The most stimulating chapter is devoted to John Adams, who died thinking he would never get his due in historians' accounts of the Revolution; for the most part, he was right. This piece is an important corrective; Adams, says Wood, was not only pessimistic about the greed and scrambling he saw in his fellow Americans, he was downright prophetic-and his countrymen, then and now, have never wanted to reckon with his critiques. Wood is an elegant writer who has devoted decades to the men about whom he is writing, and taken together, these pieces add perspective to the founding fathers cottage industry. (May 22) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Presenting a series of essays he has published previously and heavily revised here, Pulitzer Prize winner Wood focuses on the Founding Fathers, whose achievements he notes are still so highly ranked by Americans today. Wood is at his best when writing about George Washington and Aaron Burr, noting with regard to the former that his character was perfectly suited to his time: his backing of the proposed federal Constitution was crucial, and he governed with "no precedents to follow." Wood crystallizes his own opinion of Burr by defining him as "a self-assured aristocrat using his public office in every way he could to make money." This book also includes essays on Jefferson, Franklin, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, and, in perhaps the book's one flaw, John Adams. Wood makes much of John Adams's pessimism about the future of the country while glossing over his real contributions to the independence movement and his writing of the Massachusetts Constitution, which is still in use today. All in all, this is a very readable book; recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/06.]-Karen Sutherland, Bartlett P.L., IL Law & Crime Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Adult/High School-There is no shortage of new titles assessing the character and contributions of America's founders, but this excellent book is particularly well suited to high school students. Wood has selected eight remarkable men to profile: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Paine, and Aaron Burr. After describing how their reputations have undergone changes through the years, sometimes honored, sometimes reviled, the author discusses the men in terms of their own times. A chapter is devoted to each one, but these essays are not simple biographical sketches. Wood establishes his subjects' social and economic backgrounds, but then focuses on their personalities and philosophies, revealed through their correspondence. Trying to establish a meritocracy during an age of aristocracy was a daunting process, and the founders often became one another's adversaries. Their shrewd and sometimes caustic observations showed the difficulties involved in coming to a consensus on vital issues. Insecurities, humor, brilliance, and bewilderment abounded, all described in a flowing, lively style. Readers will gain a new understanding and appreciation of these men, and may even be inspired to read some of the comprehensive biographies recommended by the author.-Kathy Tewell, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
In this collection, Pulitzer Prize-winner Wood (History/Brown Univ.; The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, 2004, etc.) elegantly examines the meaning of the Founding Fathers for our time and-an infinitely harder thing to discern-for their own. Obsessed with race, class and gender, today's historians are often more intent on dehumanizing rather than simply debunking, the Founders, Wood notes. Without losing sight of the revolutionaries' often significant faults, he offers a welcome, if ironic, reminder of one of their lasting achievements: creating an egalitarian polity that had no place for aristocrats like themselves again. His meditations on the Founders' relationship to the Enlightenment and the creation of American public opinion bracket profiles of six revolutionaries who have entered the American pantheon and two (Thomas Paine and Aaron Burr) who have not. The author typically begins by discussing how different generations viewed a particular figure, then attempting to ferret out the reasons for that revolutionary's conduct. For instance, he shows that Benjamin Franklin's image as folksy self-made American is at odds with the Philadelphian's pre-revolutionary desire to become a gentleman in London. Above all, the Founders adhered to a "classical ideal of disinterested leadership" that fit their notions of character. This ideal suited a meritocracy such as their own, which broke with the English tradition of a corrupt hereditary aristocracy, but it was out of place in a rapidly evolving America that thrust obscure ordinary men into power. Wood explains his figures and their times in fresh ways, noting, for example, how Madison's frustrations in the Virginia legislature inspiredhim to curb state power at the Constitutional Convention, and why the Democratic-Republican opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 fostered the notion of truth as "the creation of many voices and many minds."Bracing, clear-eyed perspectives on why we are unlikely to see such a politically creative period again.
Wood examines the motivations, personalities, foibles, and integrity of the Founding Fathers, and how those factors bore on the creation of our nation. This temperate, informed, and informative, albeit long-winded, volume responds to revisionist historians, who have over-humanized the men who created the United States. The work benefits from the skill of narrator Scott Brick, whose intelligence and expressiveness absorbingly reflect the meat and message of even the stuffiest passages. His Shakespearean experience adds sonority and grace to a text that, on paper, often lacks both. He and his producers are a bit careless with names, as when he pronounces “Strahan,” a friend of Franklin, two ways, both wrong. Y.R. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
