Founding Brothers - The Revolutionary Generation **1/2

By Joseph J. Ellis.
Copyright 2000 by Joseph J. Ellis.
Published Vintage Books a Division of Random House, 2002.
Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, 2000.
248 pages.

This is a book that won the Pulitzer prize so clearly I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'm not going to let awards and honors sway me from my opinion no matter how wrong I am.  The problem with much non-fiction, especially that of History, is that it is not always reader friendly.  There's tons of citations, quotations, notations and appellations in this book which always make for a difficult read..  This is especially true when the book is about the politics of the day, which this one is.

But the author tries to present the content in a different way.  He tries to write stories, or essays, in a roughly chronological order (apart from the 1st one which is later/ middle in the time period covered) and this does help a little.  I believe the author even uses the word "stories" in his introduction.  And certainly the book does start off with a riveting story.  It speaks about the infamous duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton.  And that is a pretty riveting story, even when the author describes the circumstances that led to the duel, which are mostly political in nature.  They were in opposite political parties and Hamilton was pretty much libeling Burr.  Still this section of the book was very interesting.

But then the "stories" seem to be pretty flimsy constructs to hang a narrative.  Ellis might take one small event, a dinner party between rival politicians, to wax seemingly forever about the politics of the day.  A couple of the stories are not even stories  but simply concepts or themes.  Here are some example titles: The Silence, The Collaborators and The Friendship.  Not really stories, but themes.  Which is fine, but the author had me believing this would be more narrative oriented.

Not that I didn't enjoy all the information about the politics of the day.  There was much discussion about slavery, states rights vs Federal government power, and Federal banking.  All of them being intricately connected.  And I enjoyed those discussions, but I am probably a more patient reader than most.

The last two chapters center around Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and the book picks up here again.  They were friends during the Revolution, rivals in Politics, and then friends again in the waning years of their lives.  They wrote a series of letters to each other, even while Jefferson was President.  They wrote with the knowledge that they would be leaving these letters behind them after death for posterity and history.  Adams wrote that now that they were friends again, they should try to explain their differing opinions to each other, and consequently to History and the future.

I think the author war somewhat successful at making this book "reader friendly", but not completely.  And the above organization of information was helpful.  I can think of two books about History which I felt were reader friendly, so I do think it is possible to do, but admittedly rare.  One was a book about modern Mexico.  (The title escapes me but was one of my all time favorites)  It used themes to organize the information.  The book was highly readable and enjoyable.  Of course it wasn't strictly about politics, but it did have a chapter or two about that.  So maybe it is really hard to wrote a "reader friendly" book about political history.

Another book, which can be found on this blog was one about the Jamestown colony.  That was very interesting partly because it had extensive primary sources written by Captain John Smith himself.  Again this book is not strictly about the politics.  In this book, the author talked about the relationship with the Indians often.  Perhaps a bit more intriguing than strictly politics.

So, while this was an excellent book, I believe the readability suffered because of the focus on the politics and also some of the old fashioned language used in the quotes.  Maybe it's not possible to have a purely political book that is reader friendly, though I think this was a good attempt.  And of course, the content, no matter how difficult the reading, is always paramount in non-fiction and the content alone can sometimes be enough to keep a reader engaged.  Which it did for me.  I don't mind political history.

Here's some one else's opinion.