Category: Early Republic
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Amateurs, to Arms!: A Military History of the War of 1812 (1991) by John Elting
“The United States swaggered into the War of 1812 like a Kansas farm boy entering his first saloon. And, like that same innocent, wretchedly gagging down his first drink, the new nation was totally unprepared for the raw impact of all-out war.” So begins this no-holds-barred military history of one of the most purposeless, indecisive,…
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William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic (1995) by Alan Taylor
“William Cooper’s Town” isn’t a great book – it’s three great books. As the author, Alan Taylor, spells out in the introduction, “‘William Cooper’s Town’ is a hybrid of three usually distinct genres: biography, social history, and literary analysis.” The first is a fascinating biography of an eighteenth century social climber and speculator, William Cooper.…
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Washington: A Life (2010) by Ron Chernow
The year 2020 is a rough time to be a slaveholding Founding Father. As the mob indiscriminately tears down statues across America, I would argue there is no better time to read a book like this, an honest, richly textured Pulitzer Prize-winning biography from the celebrated Ron Chernow that brilliantly puts George Washington’s enormous contributions…
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Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (2012) by Jon Meacham
I must confess: I’ve never been much of a Thomas Jefferson fan. Much of my understanding of our third president has come by way of his generally unfavorable presentation in popular biographies of his esteemed contemporaries, such as Washington & Hamilton (Chernow), Adams (McCullough), Franklin (Isaacson) and Marshall (Smith). From the perspective of these prominent…
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The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West (2017) by David McCullough
“The Pioneers: The heroic story of the settlers who brought the American ideal west” traces the epic migration of hearty Americans who settled the Ohio River valley from the end of the American Revolution to the Civil War. Author David McCullough uses the obscure town of Marietta, Ohio as his focal point and uses the…
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John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (1949) by Samuel Flagg Bemis
Samuel Flagg Bemis was Sterling Professor of Diplomatic History at Yale for decades in the mid-twentieth century. In 1950 he won the Pulitzer Prize for “John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy,” an incisive portrait of perhaps the greatest diplomat in American history. Bemis charts Adams’s early days as ambassador to many…
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The Anti-Federalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781-1787 (1961) by Jackson Turner Main
It is astounding that the United States Constitution has survived 235 years. No doubt the Founding Fathers would find the powers of the modern American presidency and the extensive system of federal taxation terrifying, but overall I think they’d be impressed and proud to see how well their handiwork has stood up over the centuries.…
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Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996) by Jack Rakove
“Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution” by Jack Rakove is one of the most challenging books I’ve ever read. Normally, I plow through books like this in a week or two. I found that I could only read “Original Meanings” for maybe six to ten pages before my eyes glazed…
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The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern Word, 1788-1800 (2007) by Jay Winik
Normally I don’t pay much attention to the endorsements on the back cover of a book. “The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern Word, 1788-1800” (2007) by Jay Winik was an exception. Some of the most distinguished historians and biographers in the country lined up to heap lavish praise on this book:…
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