Here are 100 books that Founding Brothers fans have personally recommended if you like
Founding Brothers.
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I’m a political theorist at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. I spent the first fifteen years or so of my career working on the Scottish and French Enlightenments (Adam Smith, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire), but in recent years I’ve been drawn more and more to the American founding. In addition to Fears of a Setting Sun, I’m also the author of The Constitution’s Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America’s Basic Charter, which explores the constitutional vision of the immensely colorful individual who—unbeknownst to most Americans—wrote the US Constitution.
For all the drama of the Philadelphia Convention, it would have been an empty exercise had the American people not ratified the charter that it produced. Pauline Maier’s Ratificationtells the surprisingly dramatic story of the state-by-state ratification process, one that encompasses not only the famous figures of the period but also everyday citizens. Maier’s book on the Declaration of Independence,American Scripture, is also excellent.
Guns, Furs, and Gold offers a riveting narrative of the American West by exploring the interactions of the Arikaras, Crows, Cheyennes, and Arapahos with each other and with Euro-American traders, explorers, and settlers from 1804, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark embarked on their voyage of discovery, to 1864, when…
I’m a political theorist at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. I spent the first fifteen years or so of my career working on the Scottish and French Enlightenments (Adam Smith, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire), but in recent years I’ve been drawn more and more to the American founding. In addition to Fears of a Setting Sun, I’m also the author of The Constitution’s Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America’s Basic Charter, which explores the constitutional vision of the immensely colorful individual who—unbeknownst to most Americans—wrote the US Constitution.
Gordon Wood is often described as the dean of historians of the American founding, and all of his books are eminently worth reading. I was lucky enough, as a postdoc at Brown University, to sit in on the last course that he taught on the American Revolution before his retirement. Of the many volumes that Wood has written, I picked this dual biography of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson not only because it’s a delightful read, but also because it’s the book that I was reading when the idea for my book struck me.
From the great historian of the American Revolution, New York Times-bestselling and Pulitzer-winning Gordon Wood, comes a majestic dual biography of two of America's most enduringly fascinating figures, whose partnership helped birth a nation, and whose subsequent falling out did much to fix its course.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds, or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slaveowner, while Adams, the…
Joseph D’Agnese grew up in the Bicentennial-fueled excitement of the 1970s, and spent 1976 fake-playing a fife and sporting a tricorn hat in various school events. Besides teaching him how to get in and out of Revolutionary-period knickers, this experience awakened in him a love for the Founding Era of American history. He has since authored three history titles with his wife, The New York Times bestselling author Denise Kiernan.
What’s fascinating about the making of the Constitution is how every point the framers debated in 1787 rang down through the ensuing years.
Should a state’s power be determined by its land size and resources—or the size of its population? Should we abolish slavery, or pass the buck to another generation? Who should get the right to vote—rich men or all men? Deciding these big three questions consumed much of the squabbles, and led to compromise. State’s rights, for example, led to creation of the bicameral structure of Congress.
The slavery question ultimately led to war in the 19th century, and the stinging legacy of the infamous Three-fifths Compromise. Their decisions on voting rights later resulted in amendments granting African Americans and women the right of suffrage. It’s almost as if you can glimpse America’s future in those 1787 debates.
The late Richard Beeman, then a professor at the University…
In May 1787, in an atmosphere of crisis, delegates met in Philadelphia to design a radically new form of government. Distinguished historian Richard Beeman captures as never before the dynamic of the debate and the characters of the men who labored that historic summer. Virtually all of the issues in dispute—the extent of presidential power, the nature of federalism, and, most explosive of all, the role of slavery—have continued to provoke conflict throughout our nation's history. This unprecedented book takes readers behind the scenes to show how the world's most enduring constitution was forged through conflict, compromise, and fragile consensus.…
Winner of the Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.
Celebrating Mailer's centenary and the seventy-fifth publication of The Naked and the Dead, the book illustrates how Mailer remains a provocative presence in American letters.
From the debates of the nation's founders, to the revolutionary traditions of western romanticism,…
I’m a political theorist at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. I spent the first fifteen years or so of my career working on the Scottish and French Enlightenments (Adam Smith, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire), but in recent years I’ve been drawn more and more to the American founding. In addition to Fears of a Setting Sun, I’m also the author of The Constitution’s Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America’s Basic Charter, which explores the constitutional vision of the immensely colorful individual who—unbeknownst to most Americans—wrote the US Constitution.
This book is not as acclaimed as the others on this list, but it is a hidden gem. Staloff deftly weaves together the lives and ideas of three of the most notable founders, and the ways in which they were influenced by their Enlightenment forebears. Precisely because the book is relatively little-known, I recommend it all the time to colleagues and students.
In this incisively drawn book, Darren Staloff forcefully reminds us that America owes its guiding political traditions to three Founding Fathers whose lives embodied the collision of Europe's grand Enlightenment project with the birth of the nation.
Alexander Hamilton, the worldly New Yorker; John Adams, the curmudgeonly Yankee; Thomas Jefferson, the visionary Virginia squire—each governed their public lives by Enlightenment principles, and for each their relationship to the politics of Enlightenment was transformed by the struggle for American independence. Repeated humiliation on America's battlefields banished Hamilton's youthful idealism, leaving him a…
Food has always been my existential retreat from the world. Whether eating solo or with people, countless meals have been the best hyperbolic time chambers for strengthening relationships with others and with myself. And I’ve always wanted to write, to participate in ageless forums of subject and technique in this great literary tradition of ours. I guess these two art forms and obsessions were bound to lock horns in my aesthetic makeup. In my world, good reading is good eating. It’s that simple. No other qualifications are needed. I inhaled the following books and was made full every time – to eventually take a stab at a couple of recipes also.
If Cooking Gene is the rallying cry, Food: A Love Story is the marching time music.
Gaffigan expands the food observations and shenanigans from his standup routines and this memoir is just as funny as watching the family man on stage. Gaffigan’s food writing maintains a golden dynamic of being approachable and personal at the same time.
It was full of personality and gave me valuable insight into how to shape my character’s food habits as the focal point of literary scrutiny.
“What are my qualifications to write this book? None really. So why should you read it? Here’s why: I’m a little fat. If a thin guy were to write about a love of food and eating I’d highly recommend that you do not read his book.”
Bacon. McDonalds. Cinnabon. Hot Pockets. Kale. Stand-up comedian and author Jim Gaffigan has made his career rhapsodizing over the most treasured dishes of the American diet (“choking on bacon is like getting murdered by your lover”) and decrying the worst offenders (“kale is the early morning of foods”). Fans flocked to his New York…
I retired from the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, as a detective assigned to the Major Crimes Unit, but I’ve always been a writer at heart and an avid reader. I graduated from California State University in Long Beach, CA, with a major in Film. I am the author of six crime fiction books, three of which involve retired detective turned PI Frank Marr. This trilogy was critically acclaimed.
Platinga is a sergeant with the San Francisco police department. I love his book because so many of the stories are similar to ones that I experienced as a cop. It brought back some good and some not-so-good memories.
You don’t have to be a cop or a former cop to love the read, though. It’s not only a great reference book for crime writers who want to learn and add authenticity to what they’re writing but also a wonderful read for those who want to take a wild ride inside a cop’s head during the course of their tour of duty.
"The new bible for crime writers." ―The Wall Street Journal
How does it feel to be in a high-speed car chase? What is it like to shoot someone? What do cops really think about the citizens they serve? Nearly everyone has wondered what it's like to be a police officer, but no civilian really understands what happens on the job. 400 Things Cops Know shows police work on the inside, from the viewpoint of the regular cop on the beat―a profession that can range from rewarding to bizarre to terrifying, all within the course of an eight-hour shift. Written by…
Golf has been part of my life almost since I can remember. I started as a caddie at a local country club and did that through college. I earned a college scholarship called the Evans Scholarship—named for the great amateur golfer Charles “Chick’’ Evans—and then somehow went into a sportswriting career that has included covering golf for various publications, including ESPN and Sports Illustrated. Needless to say, I love the game, and reading about it and exploring other voices is a big part of my growth. While I’ve never played the game with much success, the pursuit continues.
As you might have deduced, I love Michael Bamberger books. This one had me enthralled because it took me down a path I did not envision.
He introduced me to three characters in the game I might not have otherwise come upon. Instead of the top players in the game, he focused on those who love the game in their own way, and while their stories – another golf writer, an old friend, a woman who overcame incredible odds in her home country – are not well known, they are nonetheless fascinating.
After a lifetime of writing about the professional sport, Michael Bamberger, "the poet laureate of golf" (GOLF magazine), delivers an exhilarating love letter to the amateur game as it's played-and lived-by the rest of us.
Over Michael Bamberger's celebrated writing career, he has written a handful of books and hundreds of Sports Illustrated stories about professional golf and those who play it-that is, the .001 percent. Now, Bamberger trains his eye on the rest of us. In his most personal book yet, Bamberger takes the lid off a game that is both quasi-religious and a nonstop party, posing an age-old…
I never had a particular interest in birds until I heard about David Wingate and the cahow; I’m just a reporter who was smitten by a compelling story. I often write about science and the environment, as well as travel and other topics, for publications including the Boston Globe, Archaeology, and Harvard Medicine, and while working on Rare Birds I got hooked on these extraordinary creatures and the iconoclastic obsessives who have become their stewards in the Anthropocene era. You don’t have to care about birds to love their stories — but in the end, you will.
GQ writer Flynn and his wife and two kids are minding their own business on their surburban Durham “faux farm” when a friend calls to ask if they want to add a peacock to the two chickens that wander their yard. They end up with three of the kaleidoscopic birds, and Flynn’s chronicle of the family’s first year with Carl, Ethel, and Mr. Pickle takes readers on an implausibly relatable journey from the bird’s place in history, culture, and myth through its evolutionary biology and breeding habits to its endangered status in the wild, offering sardonically hilarious and harrowingly poignant life lessons along the way.
An acclaimed journalist seeks to understand the mysterious allure of peacocks-and in the process discovers unexpected and valuable life lessons.
When Sean Flynn's neighbor in North Carolina texted "Any chance you guys want a peacock? No kidding!" he stared bewilderedly at his phone. He had never considered whether he wanted a peacock. But as an award-winning magazine writer, this kind of mystery intrigued him. So he, his wife, and their two young sons became the owners of not one but three charming yet fickle birds: Carl, Ethel, and Mr. Pickle.
In Why Peacocks?, Flynn chronicles his hilarious and heartwarming first…
I never really thought much about how limited and exclusionary our society’s ideas about intelligence are until my daughter, who has Down syndrome, was required to take her first IQ test before she started kindergarten. That experience led me to research the history of the IQ test and how it has shaped our culture’s ideas about intelligence in pernicious ways. I am a college professor who is working to change the educational and employment opportunities available to people with intellectual disabilities. I hope you enjoy the books on this list. May they lead you to reconsider what you think it means to be smart.
I love Sack’s empathy toward his patients and his commitment to telling a different and highly unique narrative about the human experience. His classic collection of essays is not about intelligence, but each patient he writes about knows and understands the world differently than what is considered normal.
Sacks makes room for the challenges and brilliance of all ways of being in the world.
If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self - himself - he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.
In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities, and yet are gifted with…
I have long been drawn to understanding others and finding ways to improve the human condition. My introduction to autism as a teenager opened my eyes to the power of truly listening—beyond words—to understand others. The books I am recommending taught me to balance empathy with critical thinking, to be compassionate yet skeptical, and to remain deliberate in how I approach human behavior. Each one has influenced not only my work as a behavior scientist but also how I connect with people in everyday life. I share them in the hopes they will inspire the same insight and care in you.
When I was in graduate school, I watched the movie Awakenings with Robin Williams playing the role of Dr. Oliver Sacks. Having really enjoyed the movie, I went to a bookstore and picked this book up and could not put it down.
Sacks, more than any author I have read, captures the perspectives, struggles, triumphs, feelings, and diversity of people dealing with various psychological and neurological conditions.
At the time, studying psychology, I was reading books, listening to lectures, and watching videos about effective listening practices. Sacks made me understand seeing the person—observing and identifying subtleties, idiosyncrasies, and proclivities—was part of being an effective observer and that listening was only possible if we use our eyes as well.
If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self - himself - he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.
In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of patients struggling to adapt to often bizarre worlds of neurological disorder. Here are people who can no longer recognize everyday objects or those they love; who are stricken with violent tics or shout involuntary obscenities, and yet are gifted with unusually acute artistic or mathematical talents.…
