In this brilliantly illuminating group portrait of the men who came to be known as the Founding Fathers, the incomparable Gordon Wood has written a book that seriously asks, “What made these men great?”—and shows us, among many other things, just how much character did in fact matter. The life of each—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Paine—is presented individually as well as collectively, but the thread that binds these portraits together is the idea of character as a lived reality. They were members of the first generation in history that was self-consciously self-made—men who understood that the arc of lives, as of nations, is one of moral progress.
Revolutionary CharactersPreface Introduction: The Founders and the Enlightenment One: The Greatness of George Washington Two: The Invention of Benjamin Franklin Three: The Trials and Tribulations of Thomas Jefferson Four: Alexander Hamilton and the Making of a Fiscal-Military State Five: Is There a "James Madison Problem?" Six: The Relevance and Irrelevance of John Adams Seven: Thomas Paine, America's First Public Intellectual Eight: The Real Treason of Aaron Burr Epilogue: The Founders and the Creation of Modern Public Opinion Notes Index
Of those writing about the founding fathers, [Gordon Wood] is quite simply the best. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
