A relevant history suggesting that the U.S. may be stronger than many of its citizens believe.
Why the Founding Fathers believed the political system they created was “an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation.”
Making the striking argument that all but one of the major founders of the U.S. died disillusioned with their creation, Rasmussen nevertheless offers hope for our current predicaments. Focusing on George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison, the author scrutinizes their surviving papers for a single element of their thought: their confidence in the future of the federal republic. His distinctive approach yields something overlooked by historians. All of them—and there were others—save Madison died pessimistic about their country’s future. The partisanship that broke out during Washington’s presidency deeply troubled him. Hamilton’s dark mood arose from what he saw as the government’s feebleness. Adams was forever despondent about his fellow citizens’ lack of virtue. Jefferson became deeply anxious about disunion; he went to his death “riddled with doubts” about the young nation’s survival. Only Madison—a man less troubled by partisanship, weak government, and the union’s breakup and more confident that institutions could offset a lack of public virtue—escaped the other founders’ dark forebodings. But should we see their misgivings as the realism of mature reflection or as an indication of an inability to adjust to changes in a distinctive nation whose future has never been foreseeable? While offering an authoritative and convincing argument in disarmingly artful prose, Rasmussen doesn’t answer that question. However, while emphasizing the founder’s “late-life despair,” he ends on a hopeful note. Despite systemic problems that have existed since the nation’s founding, our current woes “are less likely to ultimately doom the republic than we often fear”—as long as we follow these great men who, despite their fears, forged ahead until their deaths with “steadfast resolve” to strengthen the nation they’d established and led in its infancy.
A relevant history suggesting that the U.S. may be stronger than many of its citizens believe.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-691-21023-0
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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