Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Our Country's Founders PDF full book. Access full book title Our Country's Founders by William J. Bennett. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: William J. Bennett Publisher: Turtleback Books ISBN: 9780613371636 Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Based on the adult bestseller "Our Sacred Honor", this book includes writings by the extraordinary collection of talented, larger-than-life figures who led our young country. The literature offers an enormous range of thinking on virtually every aspect of how to live a virtuous life.
Author: William J. Bennett Publisher: Turtleback Books ISBN: 9780613371636 Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Based on the adult bestseller "Our Sacred Honor", this book includes writings by the extraordinary collection of talented, larger-than-life figures who led our young country. The literature offers an enormous range of thinking on virtually every aspect of how to live a virtuous life.
Author: Thomas E. Ricks Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0062997475 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 416
Book Description
New York Times Bestseller Editors' Choice —New York Times Book Review "Ricks knocks it out of the park with this jewel of a book. On every page I learned something new. Read it every night if you want to restore your faith in our country." —James Mattis, General, U.S. Marines (ret.) & 26th Secretary of Defense The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author offers a revelatory new book about the founding fathers, examining their educations and, in particular, their devotion to the ancient Greek and Roman classics—and how that influence would shape their ideals and the new American nation. On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation’s founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders’ thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch’s Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero. For though much attention has been paid the influence of English political philosophers, like John Locke, closer to their own era, the founders were far more immersed in the literature of the ancient world. The first four American presidents came to their classical knowledge differently. Washington absorbed it mainly from the elite culture of his day; Adams from the laws and rhetoric of Rome; Jefferson immersed himself in classical philosophy, especially Epicureanism; and Madison, both a groundbreaking researcher and a deft politician, spent years studying the ancient world like a political scientist. Each of their experiences, and distinctive learning, played an essential role in the formation of the United States. In examining how and what they studied, looking at them in the unusual light of the classical world, Ricks is able to draw arresting and fresh portraits of men we thought we knew. First Principles follows these four members of the Revolutionary generation from their youths to their adult lives, as they grappled with questions of independence, and forming and keeping a new nation. In doing so, Ricks interprets not only the effect of the ancient world on each man, and how that shaped our constitution and government, but offers startling new insights into these legendary leaders.
Author: Richard Brookhiser Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0465008747 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 274
Book Description
What would George Washington do about weapons of mass destruction? How would Benjamin Franklin feel about unwed mothers? What would Alexander Hamilton think about minorities in the military? Examining a host of issues from terrorism to women's rights, acclaimed historian Richard Brookhiser reveals why we still turn to the Founders in moments of struggle, farce, or disaster. Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Adams and all the rest have an unshakable hold on our collective imagination. We trust them more than today's politicians because they built our country, they wrote our user's manuals-the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution-and they ran the nation while it was still under warranty and could be returned to the manufacturer. If anyone knows how the U.S.A. should work, it must be the Founders. Brookhiser uses his vast knowledge to apply their views to today's issues. He also explores why what the Founders would think still matters. Written with Brookhiser's trademark eloquence and wit, while drawing on his deep understanding of American history, What Would the Founders Do? sheds new light on the disagreements and debates that have shaped our country from the beginning. Now, more than ever, we need the Founders-inspiring, argumentative, amusing know-it-alls-to help us work through the issues that divide us.
Author: Gregg L. Frazer Publisher: University Press of Kansas ISBN: 0700620214 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 312
Book Description
Were America's Founders Christians or deists? Conservatives and secularists have taken each position respectively, mustering evidence to insist just how tall the wall separating church and state should be. Now Gregg Frazer puts their arguments to rest in the first comprehensive analysis of the Founders' beliefs as they themselves expressed them-showing that today's political right and left are both wrong. Going beyond church attendance or public pronouncements made for political ends, Frazer scrutinizes the Founders' candid declarations regarding religion found in their private writings. Distilling decades of research, he contends that these men were neither Christian nor deist but rather adherents of a system he labels "theistic rationalism," a hybrid belief system that combined elements of natural religion, Protestantism, and reason-with reason the decisive element. Frazer explains how this theological middle ground developed, what its core beliefs were, and how they were reflected in the thought of eight Founders: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Wilson, Gouverneur Morris, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington. He argues convincingly that Congregationalist Adams is the clearest example of theistic rationalism; that presumed deists Jefferson and Franklin are less secular than supposed; and that even the famously taciturn Washington adheres to this theology. He also shows that the Founders held genuinely religious beliefs that aligned with morality, republican government, natural rights, science, and progress. Frazer's careful explication helps readers better understand the case for revolutionary recruitment, the religious references in the Declaration of Independence, and the religious elements-and lack thereof-in the Constitution. He also reveals how influential clergymen, backing their theology of theistic rationalism with reinterpreted Scripture, preached and published liberal democratic theory to justify rebellion. Deftly blending history, religion, and political thought, Frazer succeeds in showing that the American experiment was neither a wholly secular venture nor an attempt to create a Christian nation founded on biblical principles. By showcasing the actual approach taken by these key Founders, he suggests a viable solution to the twenty-first-century standoff over the relationship between church and state-and challenges partisans on both sides to articulate their visions for America on their own merits without holding the Founders hostage to positions they never held.
Author: Encyclopaedia Britannica Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0470117923 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 12
Book Description
Contains alphabetically arranged entries that provide information on the Founding Fathers, their actions, and their intentions in writing the U.S. Constitution.
Author: Willard Sterne Randall Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1524745928 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
An illuminating financial history of the Founding Fathers, revealing how their personal finances shaped the Constitution and the new nation In 1776, upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers concluded America’s most consequential document with a curious note, pledging “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” Lives and honor did indeed hang in the balance, yet just what were their fortunes? How much did the Founders stand to gain or lose through independence? And what lingering consequences did their respective financial stakes have on liberty, justice, and the fate of the fledgling United States of America? In this landmark account, historian Willard Sterne Randall investigates the private financial affairs of the Founders, illuminating like never before how and why the Revolution came about. The Founders’ Fortunes uncovers how these leaders waged war, crafted a constitution, and forged a new nation influenced in part by their own financial interests. In an era where these very issues have become daily national questions, the result is a remarkable and insightful new understanding of our nation’s bedrock values.
Author: Alf J. Mapp Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 9780742531154 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 196
Book Description
In this book, the author cuts through historical uncertainty to accurately portray the religious beliefs of 11 of America's founding fathers. (Motivation)
Author: Dennis C. Rasmussen Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 069121106X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
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.
Author: Sophia A. Nelson Publisher: Center Street ISBN: 1455569372 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 286
Book Description
Our Founders understood that America was the greatest experiment on earth. And they sealed it with these words: E pluribus Unum: "Out of Many We Are One." "America is the story of us. And us isn't doing so great right now." Says award winning journalist and author Sophia A. Nelson. Coming on the heels of the raucous and divisive 2016 general election campaign, Nelson attempts to give the nation an inspirational charge and lift by helping us to reclaim our founders' vision for a united and strong America. Nelson reminds us that "we the people" are charged by our founders' to cherish life, liberty, freedom and equality, as well as to safeguard the nation from intrusive governance. The founders' also charged our leaders to be moral, virtuous, patriotic servants of the people. In this groundbreaking book, Nelson challenges us to live out the call of our founding: We are ONE America. We are ONE People. We are ONE nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Pulling from our founding fathers' core principles of liberty, citizenship, morals, virtues, civic engagement, equality, self-governance, and, when required, civil disobedience, Nelson calls us to a higher standard. She calls us to purpose. And she calls us to rediscover the things that unite us, not divide us. One is a book that all Americans, regardless of political party, race, religion, or gender can embrace and share with their children and grandchildren for generations. It is a reminder simply of what makes America great and what makes us the envy of the world. Alexis de Tocqueville said it best: "America is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, it will cease to be great." Nelson takes us on a historical, yet very inspirational journey of not just our founding values, but the men and women who walked them out and brought America to be the great light it is in the world over the past 240 years.
Author: William J. Bennett
Author: William J. Bennett
Author: Thomas E. Ricks
Author: Richard Brookhiser
Author: Gregg L. Frazer
Author: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Author: Willard Sterne Randall
Author: Alf J. Mapp
Author: Dennis C. Rasmussen
Author: Sophia A. Nelson
Author: William J. Bennett