Mike’s Reviews > Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation > Status Update

It fascinates me how deeply hypocritical the framers were. John Adams seemed to think he believed in a fundamentally egalitarian society, despite doing little about slavery, the oppression of women, or the plight of Native Americans in this era. It's interesting that so many people thought this way.

I don't really know what else there is to say about this. It's not getting any more interesting.

This is, overall, remarkably uninteresting to me. I dunno, a lot of people seem to have enjoyed it, but it's not doing anything for me.

This is, overall, remarkably uninteresting to me. I dunno, a lot of people seem to have enjoyed it, but it's not doing anything for me.

Ellis' writing is kind of engaging, even if what he's talking about isn't. I'll give him that.

This is mostly a character study of the framers. Which would be fine, except that the ways in which their actions affected Americans is an essential part of that study, and it's completely neglected.

The problem with this book is that Ellis treats the early U.S. government more like a philosophical RPG than an actual government. He rarely acknowledges that the actions of the founding fathers had a profound effect on the people that they governed. It's unabashed Great Man History, and it ignores the most important part of the story.

This is very decidedly pro-Founding Fathers. Which I guess is what you get with an analysis that completely overlooks the effects that their actions had on the masses.

James Madison: the original bloodsucking American politician.

The slavery bits are more interesting, although I disagree with Ellis' assertion that the Declaration of Independence was unambiguous in its rejection of slavery. Maybe the first draft was, but it was edited specifically to take out the anti-slavery bits. Not to mention that the author of the document owned slaves himself... saying that it was unambiguously anti-slavery gives the framers too much credit.