Founding Brothers Book Review

Autumn Lusty
Ms. Boretsky
American History Honors
15 November 2016
Founding Brothers Book Review Founding Brothers, whom the author is Joseph Ellis, had six sections that are used to show how the leaders of the Revolutionary Generation reveal their uncertainty about the ability of the new republic to survive and the two issues that threaten the nation, slavery, and the parties’ differences. The book is focused on Aaron Burr, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. The six sections outline the events Ellis sees as main points in the time period after the founding of the U.S. Out of the many events he could’ve chosen to write about, he chose to use a section to explain The Duel,
I disagree with the book’s conclusion because I feel there would’ve been better ways to end the book than with Adams and Jefferson’s friendship and death. I also agree with the book’s conclusion because we got to delve deeper into the lives of Jefferson and Adams and their friendship together. I find it equally important as it is unimportant, but it’s still interesting to read. The book supported what I have read in history textbooks and does not have information that seems out of place or incorrect. I detected a lot of bias from Ellis, one of the reasons being his thought that George Washington is the sole reason we’re here today, which is shown in the text. He believes that Washington knew what the nation would need, and deliberately leaves out information that doesn’t fit his view of history, such as the fact that the Indians involved in the Trail of Tears would’ve suffered leaving whether they took Washington’s advice or not due to where they lived. Ellis was also very protective of John Adams and tried to blame all his bad decisions on Abigail, circumstances, and Jefferson. He also barely mentions Jefferson’s presidency and believes that Jefferson’s version of history isn’t the right version. I think the book could’ve been improved by Ellis not including some of his bias and not trying to justify one’s actions because of bias. I didn’t enjoy reading this book that much because I’m not into reading historical books in my free time. I wouldn’t recommend this book to others because it has an extreme amount of bias in it and I think they could find better historical books. This book is important to my study of U.S. history because it delves deeper into the lives of the important figures in the American Revolution than our textbooks did, so we had a deeper understanding of who they were as people and political