This is great, and it is a really quick read, if you ever are just hankerin' for a little founding father fix. Ellis doesn't try to cover the whole sweep of history here, but rather is attempting to pinpoint a few moments between personalities that had far reaching implications for the era. It's interesting to me to recognize the fragility of the whole revolutionary war era; this could so easily have fallen all to pieces, and we are all lucky that it didn't. This book also really makes one appreciate George Washington. Getting away from the whole baloney cherry tree father of our country stuff, Washington, it turns out, was a very sensible guy, and had so many chances to screw things up and always managed to keep it together. Good job George.
We examine in this volume: the Hamilton/Burr duel; the back-room deal between Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton that helped lead to Washington DC getting carved out of swampland on the Potomac; the moment in the first congress in which we almost addressed the matter of ending slavery; Washington's decision to retire after two terms; and the Jefferson/Adams relationship, going from friendliness to estrangement to friendliness once more. Adams also comes off as very sensible and pragmatic in this book, while Jefferson seems to have been a little dreamy.
We never really think about how lucky we are that the guys who put all this together didn't dissolve into chopping each other's heads off like the French Revolutionaries did. We sort of take it for granted that this didn't happen, but there's no reason it couldn't have. Washington could have declared himself emperor for life, and nobody would have been able to stop him. But he didn't. If only they had managed to take care of slavery while they were at it.

A re-read of a classic. Much more analyses than I remembered. One of the advantages to revisiting. Six distinctly different chapters with a lot attention to Washington, Adam, and Jefferson. Smaller attention to Hamilton, Madison and Franklin.

4 stars.

Ellis' book is a highly entertaining recount of selected key events involving members of the Revolutionary Generation. The initial chapters are spirited and reveal dynamic portraits of figures such as Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, Washington, Madison, and others. Ellis is particularly good at adding interesting shades of character that break the staid portrait we often have of these 'Founding Fathers'.

However, the final two chapters concerning the famous and often contentious relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson left me frustrated and ultimately disappointed. Ellis seems to have a bone to pick with the Jefferson legacy, and often falls into a very black and white presentation of these figures. Adams is characterized as brilliant and passionate, but one whose ultimately contentious nature lead him to be largely misunderstood in history. Jefferson on the other hand is presented as a master of prose whose literary gift lead him to shape his historical legacy. However, behind this gift for words is a man of little moral backbone and whose famous stature Ellis is determined to tarnish.

Beyond this revisionist presentation of history that has a bone to pick, I found Ellis characterization of these men at odds with one of his chief critiques of Jefferson. He claims that Jefferson's romantic version of history is what we remember because it casts aside complexity in favor a sweeping narrative of good against bad. He praises Adams for a more post-modern recollection of the Revolutionary period; where randomness and chance played just as much a role in the success in the 'Great Experiment' of government as did its early figures. Yet Ellis' simplified presentation of Adams and Jefferson falls very much into the category of writing that he labels Jefferson as producing. If Ellis followed Adams' post-modern sense of history, Jefferson would not be relegated to the caricature presented here.

An excellent review of some of our earliest leaders. Great information your standard history book does not reveal. Ellis is a great writer and brings his characters to life in a vibrant and informative style.