Founding Fathers PDF Download

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: 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: Robert E. Wright
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226910687
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
The authors chronicle how a different group of nine founding fathers forged the wealth and institutions necessary to transform the American colonies from a diffuse alliance of contending business interests into one cohesive economic superpower.

Author: K. M. Kostyal
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1426211759
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Kostyal tells the story of the great American heroes who created the Declaration of Independence, fought the American Revolution, shaped the US Constitution--and changed the world. The era's dramatic events, from the riotous streets in Boston to the unlikely victory at Saratoga, are punctuated with lavishly illustrated biographies of the key founders--Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison--who shaped the very idea of America. An introduction and ten expertly-rendered National Geographic maps round out this ideal gift for history buff and student alike. Filled with beautiful illustrations, maps, and inspired accounts from the men and women who made America, Founding Fathers brings the birth of the new nation to light.

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: Dennis C. Rasmussen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691241414
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: Matthew Harris
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0195326490
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
Whether America was founded as a Christian nation or as a secular republic is one of the most fiercely debated questions in American history. Historians Matthew Harris and Thomas Kidd offer an authoritative examination of the essential documents needed to understand this debate. The texts included in this volume - writings and speeches from both well-known and obscure early American thinkers - show that religion played a prominent yet fractious role in the era of the American Revolution. In their personal beliefs, the Founders ranged from profound skeptics like Thomas Paine to traditional Christians like Patrick Henry. Nevertheless, most of the Founding Fathers rallied around certain crucial religious principles, including the idea that people were "created" equal, the belief that religious freedom required the disestablishment of state-backed denominations, the necessity of virtue in a republic, and the role of Providence in guiding the affairs of nations. Harris and Kidd show that through the struggles of war and the framing of the Constitution, Americans sought to reconcile their dedication to religious vitality with their commitment to religious freedom.

Author: Joseph J. Ellis
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804172471
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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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: Alf J. Mapp
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742531154
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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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: Richard B. Bernstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190273518
Category : Founding Fathers of the United States
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This is a concise contribution to the 'Very Short Introductions' series which reintroduces the history that shaped the founding fathers, the history that they made, and what history has made of them.