As mass interest in the Founding Fathers has recently picked up, tons of books on these men have been popping up all over the place. This is one of the better ones. Divided into chapters on each Founding Father that is profiled, this book takes a look at what made these men unique and special, both in their time and in ours. While the author assumes a basic knowledge of the Revolution and who men like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Paine, Franklin, Hamilton, and Burr were, he writes in a manner that is accessible to anyone who wants to learn more about these individuals and the country they helped create. I disagree slightly with his portrayal of the characters of Jefferson and Adams, but overall, this is an excellent read.

If you want to understand the character of the founders; if you want to understand what it meant to be a gentleman, what it meant to be disinterested and virtuous; how aristocracy differed in America; how the founders viewed fame; why honor and patronage were important; why so many were in debt even though they owned so much; and how they are all very different and lived in a very different world than we do; then this is the book.

It begins with George Washington, the father of the country, who was also the person that embodied the ideals of the time more than any other founder and ends with people that did not embody these ideals like Thomas Paine and Aaron Burr. In between, there are the others who aspired to these qualities and acted accordingly in many different ways.

You will be surprised at many things as you read or listen to this book and your view of the founders and the founding of America will never be quite the same.

I read Gordon S. Woods two more prominent books ("Radicalism of the American Revolution" and "Creation of the American Republic") first. That was a mistake. This book, while not amazing in itself because of its brevity, provides good foundation for other, more detailed biographies of the Founders which assume some background knowledge and Woods more extensive works.

Last chapter a little weaker than the rest which held together better around a single person.

Actually listened to this book, but am switching my audio books to non-audio for my pages read records.

what seemed to me to be more of a retort to gore vidal's book of the same kind, and in by far a more academic endeavor than gore's, this book comes off without bias, detailing in a short and direct way, the personal lives and intimacies of the founding fathers. bravo to gordon wood for including Thomas Payne in this book as a father of America, as well as to his detailing the individual mindset, theories, philosophies, mannerisms and quirks of each of the different men, showing us that they were not all of the same frame of mind in most respects, but most times, at odds with one another's philosophies as well as their own from time to time.

In this book, I learned more about each founding father than I ever did before. I learned that there is more to them than meets the eye. Also, It explains why Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were not founding fathers. Both played major roles to developing the government and country we have today. It talks about what each had done before, during, and after the war. I learned that Ben Franklin was extremely loyalist up until 1775 when he got fired as the British postmaster. Everyone outside of America thought that he was the definition of an American, but in America nobody really knew what he did and what made him so famous. I love this book because it dives deep into the lives of the people that developed the country we live in today. This book is great for history lovers like myself.

This set of essays on the Founding Fathers combines fresh viewpoints and scholarly thought into an interesting set of portraits. Some are more interesting that others. The Adams chapter, for instance, gets bogged down in political theory, while the perceived "Madison problem" is examined at length. The chapters on Washington and Franklin are strong and persuasive. As is Wood's general theme that the country that emerged from the decades following the revolution was not exactly what the Founders had envisioned.

I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff and while this one isn't the best, it certainly added to my knowledge of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, etc. and made me wonder at why we don't have men like them around today.

An excellent overview into life in 18th century America and the personalities of America's founders. I found it helpful in understanding theses men and the culture that formed them and what lead them to risk so much and become revolutionaries.

The author's high-level look at the American Revolution's major players and gives them more shape through insight into what their thoughts and intentions were during the period. I enjoyed learning not about the events that made these men famous - as that isn't the book's point - but rather what attitudes drove the founders as they sought to figure out their own lives in the tumultuous period. Washington's fastidiousness, Burr's shamelessness, Adams' eccentricity all come to life in the brief "biographies".

A criticism would be that there is some repetition when Wood references founders in other chapters than the one named for them. Other than that it was thoroughly enjoyable and encouraged me to dig a little deeper into that remarkable period.

America's Founders And American Ideals

For much of our history, the leaders of the American Revolution and the framers of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution enjoyed iconic, mythic status. But they have also been subjected to criticism and debunking, based on their alleged elitism, racism, and sexism in our increasingly cynical, skeptical age.

In his recent collection of essays, "Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different" (2006), Gordon Wood offers thoughtful meditations on the Founders. Gordon Wood is Professor of History at Brown University. He is deservedly esteemed for his studies of the Revolutionary era.

In his book, Wood offers succinct discussions of the Founders, their backgrounds, what they did, and, most importantly, what they thought. He sets the Founders within their time but shows, paradoxically, how the success of the Founders made their achievements and characters impossible to replicate in subsequent generations.

Wood's book consists of individual essays on eight founders, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Adams, Paine, and Burr. His Introduction and concluding Epilogue attempt to bring coherence to the story. For Wood, what sets the Founders apart from subsequent leaders was their ability to combine high intellectual achievement in politics with the life of affairs and leadership. In much of the subsequent history of the United States, intellectuals and thinkers have been separated from active political life and, in fact, alienated from it. (Thus, the cynicism that I mentioned at the outset of this review.) He finds that the Founders were able to combine the world of intellect with that of practical politics through a devotion to Enlightenment and aristocratic ideals, including ideals regarding the role of an educated gentleman in society, and ideals of civil behavior and good manners, in a broad sense. The Founders were in part individuals who had risen by their own efforts, in most cases through education and study. They used their success to devote themselves to the good of the country and to expand the scope of public participation. This expansion of the scope of citizen participation in the government lead to democracy and egalitarianism and destroyed the conditions which had made the achievement of the Founders itself possible.

Of the essays in the book, the first, "On the Greatness of George Washington" is a reminder of why this reserved, austere figure deserves to be remembered as the greatest of Presidents and as the greatest member of an outstanding generation. The essays on John Adams and James Madison have the highest degree of intellectual content. In the Adams essay, Woods discusses Adams' political philosophy and shows how it was in part prescient and profound and in part based upon a misunderstanding of American constitutionalism. In the essay on Madison, Woods argues that there was a unity of thought throughout his career, rather than a switch from Federalism to states rights and democracy, as argued by many.

The essays of Thomas Paine and Aaron Burr are interesting in themselves and also for the light the cast on the other Founders. In both cases, Wood uses them as foils. Paine was already a democrat and a writer of inflammatory prose for readers without education or knowledge of the classics. This set him apart from his contemporaries. Aaron Burr abandoned the ideal and devotion to public service of the remaining founders and devoted himself solely to the pursuit of his own interests. This basic change, (and not his subsequent activities in the West for which he was tried for treason) is, for Wood, "The Real Treason of Aaron Burr."

Wood's book is an outstanding way to become reacquainted with the American Founders. It encouraged me to think about how American ideals originated, and how they developed and changed through time.

Robin Friedman

I gave this book a poor rating, not because it's a bad book, but because its' subject matter is over my interest level. This book is not written for laymen wishing to learn something about the founders but a bunch of essays where Wood puts the work and legacy of the founders into what I take to be a new perspective via pouring through existing scholarship. This is not a collection of mini bios by any means and belongs more on the shelf of a student of the topic or an actual student assigned the text. That said, if I were any of the above, the book would have gotten more stars. It was me, not the book.