Founding Brothers

I just finished a good read I have to post about. It’s Joseph Ellis’s the Founding Brothers. I had picked up a used copy earlier this year at the going out business sale of Rodney’s. I never know with history books. I like history but I read the books during my commute mostly. So it has to read well. Can’t be too dry. It makes them hit or miss. The Scottish history book I picked up in the same trip is case in point. I can’t follow it – it jumps all over the place and seems to assume you know more than you really do. In contrast, the 1776 book by David McCullough was a good read – nice and easy and kept you enthralled enough to survive a commute ride home. That being said, I felt like I learned a very narrow part of history and specific point of view.

I would say the Founding Brothers was even better than the 1776 book. Mainly because I feel like I’m walking away with an even better sense of the period at that time. I picked the book up because it won the Pulitzer Prize awhile back – always a good sign. I was expecting it to be drier since it’s a culmination of this historian’s reading of the era for thirty years. He starts out with the infamous duel of Hamilton and Burr. I have to admit when I first started reading this chapter all I could think of was that wonderful Got Milk commercial from the 90s. It starred a history fanatic on the phone with a call-in radio show that only had to answer the question of who shot Alexander Hamilton to win $10,000. He says “aawan brr, aawan brr!” but they can’t understand him because he had just taken a bite of a peanut butter sandwich. A classic – check it out here.

Anyways, back to the book – it was great, through the chapters and the major milestones of the 1790s you get a glimpse into the real life of the chaos that was our early nation. We have the Jeffersonian utopian view these days that it was all simple and by rejecting the English everything else fell into place. But instead it reminds me of a class I took in Ohio – it was about teaching kids how to read (mandatory for all wannabe teachers – even if you were teaching middle school math). I was amazed that I (or anyone else) ever learned how to read once I got into the middle of the course. Same with our country, it’s amazing the thing didn’t fall apart that first decade. Interestingly enough, I’ve been reading a history book on the French revolution (in particular the period between the overthrow of Louis XVI and his beheading – a bit slower going as my French is pretty rusty – just kidding, it just doesn’t read as well) and there are interesting overlaps especially concerning Jefferson and Adams differing point of views of the success and similarity of that revolution with our own.

This doesn’t really represent the book but I have to share because it’s so intriguing, “The term American, like the term democrat, began as an epithet, the former referring to an inferior, provincial creature, the later to one who panders to the crude and mindless whims of the masses.” Isn’t that interesting? The book does address the biggest issue our founding fathers faced – the issue of slavery. It seems so black and white these days, but Ellis does a good job of letting us see the issue from the perspective of the day. There was no simple solution. Mainly because the eventual solution was not on the table, it wasn’t even considered. It struck me that “no model of a genuinely biracial society existed anywhere in the world at that time, nor had any existed in recorded history.” I wonder if that is really true. It’s amazing the solution the founding fathers chose was to not address the issue at all – there is a strict code of silence around the topic. For if the topic was truly argued, it was generally agreed that the consequences would be the nation in its infancy would not survive.

Now I’m starting to rehash the book. I leave it to Mr. Ellis to share the wonderful insights as he does a much better job. I highly recommend the book and it’s one that will remain on my bookshelf as I weed out other books and try to downsize my collection. I’ve started to think I might have too many books. I greatly agree with Cicero about rooms and books and souls (even though I don’t believe in souls per se) but I’m starting to run out of room in my little ol’ place and not all the books were awesome like this one. It’s just like one’s closet – you weed out the clothes you no longer will wear, same with the books.