American Dialogue
Joseph J. Ellis
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
American Dialogue
Joseph J. Ellis
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Ellis.
...richly rewarding.
The treatments of each subject can be uneven; it’s very likely that different readers will find different sections uneven, depending on where they agree with Ellis.
The chapters on the founders are insightful and clearly benefit from his deep knowledge of the men's lives, works and his familiarity with seemingly every written word they ever produced. But the current events chapters are often unfocused, don't quite mesh with their related founder chapter and often veer toward a rehash of liberal conventional wisdom..
Eliis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling historian, is aware of the difficulties and dangers implicit in seeking answers to our current debates and dilemmas in the archives of the Founding Fathers, yet he attempts to do so here, and his effort to apply the views of four historical icons to current political conflicts is interesting and useful.
[The book's organization] puts the reader in a position to grasp how understanding today’s controversial issues can be enhanced by learning how they were originally dealt with by the smartest guys in the room when the country first began facing its problems.
Ellis...offers a lucid and authoritative examination of America’s tumultuous beginnings, when the Founding Fathers grappled with issues of race, income inequality, law, and foreign policy—all issues that still vex the nation. Believing that history is 'an ongoing conversation between past and present,' the author asks what Jefferson, Washington, Madison, and Adams can teach us today. 'What did ‘all men are created equal’ mean then and now? Did the ‘pursuit of happiness’ imply the right to some semblance of economic equality? Does it now?' These and other salient questions inform Ellis’ vivid depiction of the controversies swirling as the Constitution was drafted and ratified. A discerning, richly detailed inquiry into America’s complex political and philosophical legacy..
The founders have much to tell us about current problems, none of it simple, according to this incisive study of American political creeds. Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Ellis probes the writings of four Revolutionary War leaders on issues of ideology and governance that still roil America.