Review: Founding Brothers

Author: Joseph J. Ellis
Format: hardcover 246 pgs w/additional 30 pgs notes
Subject: Revolutionary war personalities
Setting: US 1790-1825
Genre: Historical vignettes
Source: My shelves



I was hoping this book would be a 'refresher' to bring me back up to snuff on the most telling issues of the American Revolution. I am rejoining the US Presidents' challenge, having read bios of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson several years ago, and didn't want to have to go back.

Ellis presents us six essays which are alternately entertaining, enlightening, and brutally boring. He seems to think that if 100 words would do, 500 are much better. I had a hard time in several places staying awake.

Interestingly, he begins with the Hamilton-Burr duel, and seems to feel a lengthy lesson in economics is needed to explain the enmity built up between these two.

Then he gives us a chapter entitled "The Dinner" at which Thomas Jefferson, the host, is reputed to have brokered a deal between Hamilton and Madison to allow for federal assumption of all states debt in exchange for allowing the federal capital to be situated in Virginia. We got page upon page of background, but I had a hard time finding the dinner.

The third chapter "The Silence" I found the most interesting, but also the most difficult to read. It refers to the decision of the Founders to avoid a discussion or decision about the question of slavery.

Next up is "The Farewell" a elucidation of Washington's famous address in which he puts forth his (and many claim Hamilton's) thoughts on the party system, the need for the country not to form alliances, etc. Again, enlightening, but pedantic.

"The Collaborators" I found the hardest of all to follow. To me it was a series of short paragraphs describing various friendships, alliances and relationships that helped patch together diverse policies.

And finally, "the Friendship". The most cogent of the chapters where Ellis gives us a condensed look at the magnificent letter writing that took place over the last 14 years of the lives of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

If you are a true history buff, you'll love this book. It is extensively researched, and well footnoted. If you are looking for a quick fill in, this might not be the book for you. I'm glad I read it, but I won't be pulling it off the shelf to re-read anytime soon.




Challenges: Read from My Shelves 2/20, US Presidents (background reading)

Review: American Lion, Andrew Jackson in the White House

Before I read this book, I knew that Andrew Jackson was the 7th president, he led the army in victory at the Battle of New Orleans, and there was a great deal of scandal/ dispute over his marriage to Rachel Donelson. After I read this Pulitzer Prize winning discussion of his years as President, I now know all I ever wanted to know (and a WHOLE lot I could have done without) about the ladies dispute over 'receiving' Mrs. Margaret Eaton, wife of his secretary of war. It seems Margaret was regarded as a rather loose woman by many of the grand dames of Washington, and the author chose to spend literally 100's of pages discussing the reactions to her and Jackson's insistence that the Eatons be treated with respect. Meacham's theory seems to be that Jackson was sympathetic to the couple since he had undergone the same kind of shunning when he married Rachel. Consequently, we are given short shrift on some of the more vital aspects of Jackson's life and presidency. For instance, Jackson's views on slavery are fairly glossed over. There are exactly 5 pages devoted to his ownership of slaves (he owned 150), and the fact that he did not ever free any of them. We hear nothing of his actual views of this abominable practice. We are treated to his denunciations of the US Bank and pages upon pages of everything he did to try to disband it, but for those of us with a lack of indepth knowledge of the issue, we are never given a good reason WHY he wanted to disband the bank. Again we are treated to many many pages of personality conflicts of all the players in this debacle, but scant delineation about the issue itself. We hear of Jackson's views on nullification and secession, and very his often conflicting views about the Native American population---I definitely would have liked to have had a much more indepth discussion of this vice the ladies tea party debates. Jackson's policies led directly to the Trail of Tears -- the forced expulsion of the Cherokees to western lands, but nowhere do we see how he reacted to it. We are given speeches in which he identified himself as the Great White father, and some indication that he felt justified in breaking treaties, but the subject deserves much more if this book were to truly explain Jackson's achievements. Meacham posits that because Jackson was orphaned so young, he deeply missed having the opportunity of belonging to family. He saw the American people as his family, and used his popularity to enforce his views. He believed in a powerful executive. He was the first American president to have used the veto simply because he disagreed with a bill Congress had passed. Prior to Jackson, presidents had only vetoed bills they thought were unconstitutional. If you were white, you were entitled to the full protection of the government. If you were black or Native american, (or Mexican--we mustn't forget the few pages devoted to the Mexican wars), you didn't deserve the liberties spelled out in the Constitution. Meacham sums it:

(Jackson) also proved the principle that the character of the president matters enormously. Politics is about more than personality; the affairs of a great people are shaped by complex and messy forces that transcend the purely biographical. Those affairs, however, are also fundamentally affected by the complex and messy individuals who marshal and wield power in a given era. Jackson was a transformative president in part because he had a trancendent personality.....he gave his most imaginative successors the means to do things they thought right. The great often teach by their failures and derelictions. The tragedy of Jackson's life is that a man dedicated to freedom failed to see liberty as a universal, not a particular, gift. The triumph of his life is that he held together a country whose experiment in liberty ultimately extended its protections and promises to all--belatedly it is true, but by saving the Union, Jackson kept the possibility of progress alive, a possibility that would have died had secussion and separation carried the day.

Jackson certainly changed the role of the Presidency. Whether those changes were good or not so good is impossible to determine from reading only this book.

ARC received: American Lion

As you can see on the Waiting to Be Reviewed list in the sidebar, I received an Early Review copy of American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, by John Meacham. (Thank you LibraryThing!). I'm really anxious to get into this one because I'm participating in the LibraryThing "US Presidents" challenge to read at least one good biography of every American president before the next election. I wasn't really planning to start this challenge in earnest until I'd finished my other current 999 challenges, and I'd hoped to read them in order of their serving, but this has been so highly praised by everyone who's read it--and it won the Pulitzer Prize--that I'm jumping the queue and going to read this within the month. When I get an ARC (Advance Reader's Copy) or ER book I try to read and review as soon as I can. I'm rarely disappointed, so look for this review to post sometime soon. Thanks also to Random House for making these copies available to LT. We really do enjoy being able to spread the word.

Review: Gilead

Warning...this is not a real review because I just could NOT finish this book. I read almost 125 pages, then tried listening to it on audio, and frankly just found it plain BORING. I know it won the Pulitzer, but it's not a prize winner for me. Set in the midwest, the main character is a dying old man who has been a preacher all his life, he was the son of a preacher, and his best friend was a preacher. He marries late in life, has a son, and decides as he's dying, to write letters to his son to be read in the son's adulthood. This is after he claims to have hand-written 67,000 pages of weekly sermons. The man sure do like to hear his own words! But those words are dry, drier, and make for the driest book I have ever read. Several other reviewers have indicated that it takes a while to get into, but after two weeks of 'getting into', I'm not willing to sap my energy anymore. Perhaps this is the reason for my previously reported reading funk?