American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic » (Reprint)

Joseph Ellis is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Founding Brothers. His portrait of Thomas Jefferson, American Sphinx, won the National Book Award. He is the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his wife, Ellen, and their youngest son, Alex.

National Bestseller

Acclaimed historian Joseph J. Ellis brings his unparalleled talents to this riveting account of the early years of the Republic.

The last quarter of the eighteenth century remains the most politically creative era in American history, when a dedicated group of men undertook a bold experiment in political ideals. It was a time of both triumphs and tragedies—all of which contributed to the shaping of our burgeoning nation. Ellis casts an incisive eye on the gradual pace of the American Revolution and the contributions of such luminaries as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, and brilliantly analyzes the failures of the founders to adequately solve the problems of slavery and the treatment of Native Americans. With accessible prose and stunning eloquence, Ellis delineates in American Creation an era of flawed greatness, at a time when understanding our origins is more important than ever.

 

The Barnes & Noble Review

Academic fashion determines the way whole generations are educated, and since the '60s, as historian Joseph Ellis slyly remarks, a "hegemonic narrative" has prevailed within the academy, in which race, class, and gender are the privileged categories and the Founding Fathers of the American Republic have all too often been dismissed as the deadest of dead white males -- "racists, classists, and sexists, a kind of rogues' gallery rather than a gallery of greats." Historians have focused their attention, instead, on America's dispossessed: slaves, women, and Native Americans.

Foreword ix Prologue: The Founding 3 Chapter 1 The Year 20 Chapter 2 The Winter 58 Chapter 3 The Argument 87 Chapter 4 The Treaty 127 Chapter 5 The Conspiracy 165 Chapter 6 The Purchase 207 Afterword 241 Notes 245 Acknowledgments 269 Index 271