27 Books Like The Last Founding Father

I’ve never seen a man’s life told with such clarity and skill as Caro lays out LBJ’s journey. I was in awe of how clear-eyed Caro was about what his story is about: not the facts and dates of LBJ’s life, but what Caro saw in LBJ’s life about ambition, politics, and the powers that shape society.

Caro never for a second loses sight of the story he is telling, and what it is truly about: power, how to get it, and how to yield it. Caro’s adherence to the themes he found in LBJ’s story is inspiring—and completely informed how I approach storytelling.

Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin ranks among the top of Isaacson’s excellent biographies.

He provides thorough detail and background of Franklin’s life, examining him through the eyes of the quintessential American: an entrepreneur, a writer, a small businessman, a cosmopolitan, and a statesman (albeit lacking the higher offices). 

Isaacson briefly treats Franklin’s religious views and the reasons why Franklin moved away from the Puritan faith of his forebearers and embraced a creed more akin to deism. 

Growing up in Virginia, I was forced to admire Thomas Jefferson. By “force,” I mean that we took frequent field trips to Monticello, Jefferson’s home, and Williamsburg, where Jefferson attended the College of William & Mary. I was brought to Jefferson’s homes across Virginia and have seen numerous statues of this great and valuable thinker, writer, and political leader.

But naturally, given Jefferson’s role in writing the Declaration of Independence and yet his ownership of slaves up until the day of his death raises important contradictions for any serious student of American history. In grappling with Jefferson, we grapple with the meaning of America and of America’s ideals for younger students today.  

Thomas Jefferson is, indeed, the most enigmatic of the Founding Fathers. He lived in such a way that he fell deeper and deeper into debt over the course of his lifetime; why?

Thomas Jefferson was a man of… show more.

Consider Joseph Ellis’ Founding Brothers more of a series of biographies–portraits of great individuals shaping history for the better–of such individuals during the most important period of their lives and in the history of our country.

Ellis’ masterful work focuses on the relationship between the Founding Fathers in the latter half of the eighteenth century, which, as the title suggests, was fraught with all the difficulties and rivalries one might expect as brothers. Figures like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington were men not unlike the rest of us, driven by passion, ambition, and the vision to see the American republic become a beacon of hope and freedom for the entire world. 

Yet, these passions and contrary views of the American experiment in self-government, at times, spilled out into the open, and Ellis does a masterful job elucidating the rivalries between these great men and what was at stake… show more.

Senator Rufus King played the role of disrupter on Capitol Hill during James Madison's presidency. Once united in the public relations campaign to convince the states to ratify the U.S. Constitution, King and Madison became rivals when King ran as the vice-presidential candidate on the ticket against President Madison in the 1808 presidential campaign. That rivalry took a conspiratorial turn in 1813 and 1814. Thanks to King's letters, we now know that General Armstrong was speaking covertly to Senator King against President Madison while serving in Madison's cabinet. Both New Yorkers with their eye on the presidency, their mutual ambition was to ensure that no Virginian, especially Secretary of State James Monroe, won the presidency in 1816. Their failure shows why most Americans do not know the name of Rufus King.

The other books I am recommending focus on pieces of the Revolution; American Revolutions is a sweeping history of the American Revolution.

This is the book I recommend to anyone who wants the whole story, from the Revolution’s causes coming out of the Seven Years’ War, through protests, declaring independence, fighting a war across the continent, to Jefferson’s postwar visions of American expansion.

Most big picture histories of the Revolution are still stuck in the old Founding Fathers and generals model, but American Revolutions manages to tell all of this history without focusing solely on men like John Adams and George Washington. We learn about them but also about ordinary men and women—rebelling and loyalist; British, French, and Spanish; enslaved and free—caught up in it all.

Winter, one of my favorite nonfiction authors, has written a witty, bracingly honest reference book about the smart, talented men who founded our nation (four became presidents). I like how the data about each one adds up to an interesting character sketch (a few details about James Madison: he weighed 100 pounds, enjoyed chess and horseback riding, and owned 108 human slaves, although he professed to be anti-slavery).

Young readers will come away with the understanding that our founders were not saints—they were imperfect human beings capable of greatness and weakness.

This book is compelling because Mazzeo is such a skillful writer of creative nonfiction (I also loved her Great Courses lectures on that subject)—and because the focus on Eliza Hamilton shifts what we thought we knew about her vaunted husband. Mazzeo is terrific at keeping Eliza at the center of her own story. And Mazzeo is not afraid to offer informed speculation when the documentary record, as it often does for underrepresented voices from this period, falters. As a professional historian, I learned a lot about centering women's experiences in stories that men keep threatening to take over—and about what kinds of speculation I am and am not comfortable with. I also found her approach to the Reynolds Affair—carefully documented, well reasoned, and centered on Eliza's perspective—to be bold, refreshing, and pretty persuasive. Why should we (as most recent Hamilton scholars have done) simply take Alexander Hamilton at his word… show more.

This early American novel starts off with an episode of human spontaneous combustion, followed by repeated episodes of characters hearing disembodied voices.

Brown’s novel uses these Gothic devices and a couple of real-life murder cases to explore religious and political issues that preoccupied Americans in the years after the Revolution. How do we know whether we’re really being guided by reason? What is the basis of authority?

Most editions of Wieland include Brown’s prequel Memoirs of Carwin, which complicates the story by placing one of the main characters in an Illuminati-like organization. American Gothic literature pretty much starts here.  

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.