Fouding Brothers

Founding Brother: Book Review

Joseph J. Ellis, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is the author of this book “Founding Brother: The Revolutionary Generation”. He is also the author for eight other books and is one of the nation’s leading scholars of American History. Ellis is generally known for writing biographies; books which are based upon another person’s life. Along with the Founding Brothers novel Ellis also wrote “American Sphinx” which is a book based off of Thomas Jefferson’s life. He also wrote a book about our first president, George Washington. This book was called “His Excellency: George Washington”. Ellis now lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with his wife and is a professor at the University of Massachusetts. He is also a father to 3 boys, one of which attends school at the University of Mississippi.

While reading this novel it’s clear to the reader that the intended audience is college students. This is a biography on the lives of the leading men of America in that time period; Hamilton, Burr, Franklin, Washington, Adams, Madison, and Jefferson in the 1770’s and through July of 1826. Ellis does a good job at covering all of the political, economic, and social pieces of this time period.

The generated thesis that Ellis presents in “Founding Brothers” is that the success of the United States was not always something that could be predicted with certainty the way it’s done in this day and age. These brothers believed that if they remained together as one rather than splitting up into individuals, the effect and threat that came across would threaten other nations more.

In the first chapter there is a duel that occurs on July 11, 1804 between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. At this time Hamilton was the first appointed Secretary of Treasury by George Washington himself and Burr was the Vice President of Thomas Jefferson. This duel took place on a narrow ledge that was twenty feet above water level, which was at the base of a bluff near Weehawken....