Something That Will Surprise the World: The Essential Writings of the Founding Fathers - Hardcover

Dunn, Susan

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9780465017799: Something That Will Surprise the World: The Essential Writings of the Founding Fathers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465017797 ISBN 13: 9780465017799

Publisher: Basic Books, 2006

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The Founding Fathers--Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Madison. Subjects of seemingly infinite biographies, they are rarely allowed to speak to us in their own words. But it was their words that mattered most to them. As James Madison once wrote, "the biography of an author must be a history of his writings." Here, finally, these towering figures come together in one volume--in conversation with each other, and with us. The Founders were thinking revolutionaries--they read, questioned, debated, and, most of all, wrote. They theorized about government and political institutions; considered the problem of parties and factions; and reflected on religion and education. In this volume, eminent historian Susan Dunn brings together the Founders' most important letters, speeches, and essays and sets them in the context of their lives and times. Through their words, the Founders created the first democracy of the modern world. Their courage, imagination, and genius would never be surpassed. Here they are, in the present tense of their extraordinary lives. To truly understand them, this is where we must begin.

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About the Author:

Susan Dunn is Professor of Humanities at Williams College. She is the author or editor of numerous books, including Something That Will Surprise the World: The Essential Writings of the Founding Fathers; and Jefferson's Second Revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

From Booklist:

The Founding Fathers wrote a corpus of material so vast that several collected-works projects now in operation have kept their scholars employed for decades. No general-interest reader has that kind of time, so historian-editor Dunn offers this manageable selection from the writings of Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, John Adams, and Madison. She excludes Franklin, without explanation. A preface by highly popular biographer Joseph Ellis speculates about the upsurge of popular interest in these figures, while Dunn's introductions summarize their political inclinations (e.g., Hamilton's toward aggrandizing government, Jefferson's toward restraining it). Otherwise, each document is unmediated, compelling a reader into an independent mind-set that considers why the correspondent (most selections are letters) is taking up the quill. To socialize, to transmit intelligence, to philosophize, to justify--this spectrum of reasons, and the reflections they shed on the writer's character, times, and matter of the moment, lends vivacity to this volume. American history browsers will be pleased with Dunn's choices, which cover the Founders' famous writings but whose heart is in presenting their private communications. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved

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