American Dialogue PDF Download

Author: Joseph J. Ellis
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 038535343X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
The award-winning author of Founding Brothers and The Quartet now gives us a deeply insightful examination of the relevance of the views of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams to some of the most divisive issues in America today. The story of history is a ceaseless conversation between past and present, and in American Dialogue Joseph J. Ellis focuses the conversation on the often-asked question "What would the Founding Fathers think?" He examines four of our most seminal historical figures through the prism of particular topics, using the perspective of the present to shed light on their views and, in turn, to make clear how their now centuries-old ideas illuminate the disturbing impasse of today's political conflicts. He discusses Jefferson and the issue of racism, Adams and the specter of economic inequality, Washington and American imperialism, Madison and the doctrine of original intent. Through these juxtapositions--and in his hallmark dramatic and compelling narrative voice--Ellis illuminates the obstacles and pitfalls paralyzing contemporary discussions of these fundamentally important issues.

Author: Robert W. Galvin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742522800
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
In this important work, the author illuminates how the founding fathers' motives, thoughts, and actions were framed by the Scottish Enlightenment.

Author: David O. Stewart
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0451489004
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
A fascinating and illuminating account of how George Washington became the dominant force in the creation of the United States of America, from award-winning author David O. Stewart “An outstanding biography . . . [George Washington] has a narrative drive such a life deserves.”—The Wall Street Journal Washington's rise constitutes one of the greatest self-reinventions in history. In his mid-twenties, this third son of a modest Virginia planter had ruined his own military career thanks to an outrageous ego. But by his mid-forties, that headstrong, unwise young man had evolved into an unassailable leader chosen as the commander in chief of the fledgling Continental Army. By his mid-fifties, he was unanimously elected the nation's first president. How did Washington emerge from the wilderness to become the central founder of the United States of America? In this remarkable new portrait, award-winning historian David O. Stewart unveils the political education that made Washington a master politician—and America's most essential leader. From Virginia's House of Burgesses, where Washington mastered the craft and timing of a practicing politician, to his management of local government as a justice of the Fairfax County Court to his eventual role in the Second Continental Congress and his grueling generalship in the American Revolution, Washington perfected the art of governing and service, earned trust, and built bridges. The lessons in leadership he absorbed along the way would be invaluable during the early years of the republic as he fought to unify the new nation.

Author: Nancy I. Sanders
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1556528116
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Celebrates the lives and contributions of African-American leaders who played significant roles in colonial and Revolutionary War-era America, and includes over twenty related activities.

Author: Gerard N. Magliocca
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814761453
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
John Bingham was the architect of the rebirth of the United States following the Civil War. A leading antislavery lawyer and congressman from Ohio, Bingham wrote the most important part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees fundamental rights and equality to all Americans. He was also at the center of two of the greatest trials in history, giving the closing argument in the military prosecution of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. And more than any other man, Bingham played the key role in shaping the Union’s policy towards the occupied ex-Confederate States, with consequences that still haunt our politics. American Founding Son provides the most complete portrait yet of this remarkable statesman. Drawing on his personal letters and speeches, the book traces Bingham’s life from his humble roots in Pennsylvania through his career as a leader of the Republican Party. Gerard N. Magliocca argues that Bingham and his congressional colleagues transformed the Constitution that the Founding Fathers created, and did so with the same ingenuity that their forbears used to create a more perfect union in the 1780s. In this book, Magliocca restores Bingham to his rightful place as one of our great leaders. Gerard N. Magliocca is the Samuel R. Rosen Professor at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He is the author of three books on constitutional law, and his work on Andrew Jackson was the subject of an hour-long program on C-Span’s Book TV.

Author: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470117923
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 12

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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: Dennis C. Rasmussen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069121106X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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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: Richard B. Bernstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190273518
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This concise and elegant contribution to the Very Short Introduction series reintroduces the history that shaped the founding fathers, the history that they made, and what history has made of them. The book provides a context within which to explore the world of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton, as well as their complex and still-controversial achievements and legacies.

Author: Donald T. Phillips
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
ISBN: 0759524203
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Extracts valuable lessons on business leadership from the story of the Founding Fathers' struggle to create a new nation. Shows how figures such as Thomas Paine, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin faced challenges and dissension in their own ranks with a vision from which they would not stray. Includes checklists of organizational, management, strategic, and leadership lessons learned from the leaders of the American Revolution. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Author: Lorraine Smith Pangle
Publisher: Lawrence, KS : University Press of Kansas
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
"This very important book is original, sweeping, and wise about the relation between education and liberal democracy in the United States. The Pangles reconsider superior ideas from the founding period in a way that illuminates any serious thinking on American education, whether policy-oriented or historical". -- American Political Science Review. "An important and thoughtful book, stimulating for citizens as well as scholars". -- Journal of American History.