The Founding Fathers Reconsidered

R. B. Bernstein (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

256 Seiten

2011
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-983257-6 (ISBN)

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This concise and elegant book reintroduces us to the history that shaped the founding fathers, the history that they made, and what history has made of them. It gives the reader a context within which to explore the world of the founding fathers and their complex and still-controversial achievements and legacies.

Here is a vividly written and compact overview of the brilliant, flawed, and quarrelsome group of lawyers, politicians, merchants, military men, and clergy known as the "Founding Fathers"--who got as close to the ideal of the Platonic "philosopher-kings" as American or world history has ever seen.

In The Founding Fathers Reconsidered, R. B. Bernstein reveals Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and the other founders not as shining demigods but as imperfect human beings--people much like us--who nevertheless achieved political greatness. They emerge here as men who sought to transcend their intellectual world even as they were bound by its limits, men who strove to lead the new nation even as they had to defer to the great body of the people and learn with them the possibilities and limitations of politics. Bernstein deftly traces the dynamic forces that molded these men and their contemporaries as British colonists in North America and as intellectual citizens of the Atlantic civilization's Age of Enlightenment. He analyzes the American Revolution, the framing and adoption of state and federal constitutions, and the key concepts and problems--among them independence, federalism, equality, slavery, and the separation of church and state--that both shaped and circumscribed the founders' achievements as the United States sought its place in the world.

R. B. Bernstein is Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law at New York Law School, and has written, edited, or co-edited nineteen books on American constitutional and legal history, including Thomas Jefferson.

Introduction ; I. The History that Made the Founding Fathers ; The State of the Union ; Free-Born English Subjects ; The Intellectual World ; II. The History that the Founding Fathers Made ; Independence ; Constitution-Making ; Federalism ; Politics ; Church and State ; Equality, Inequality, and Slavery ; America in the World ; Part III. What History Made of the Founding Fathers ; Ancestor Worship? ; "Which Founding Father Are You?" ; The Dead Hand of the Past: Original Intent ; Conclusion ; Notes ; Chronology ; Further Reading

Zusatzinfo	13 b/w halftones
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	206 x 140 mm
Gewicht	272 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
	Recht / Steuern ► EU / Internationales Recht
	Recht / Steuern ► Rechtsgeschichte
ISBN-10	0-19-983257-9 / 0199832579
ISBN-13	978-0-19-983257-6 / 9780199832576
Zustand	Neuware