What Would the Founders Do?

Our Questions, Their Answers

By Brookhiser, Richard

Publishers Summary:
A lively, timely, and surprising exploration of how America's Founding Fathers would handle the most controversial issues facing the nation today--from the acclaimed popular historian Richard Brookhiser Why do Americans care so much about the Founding Fathers? After all, the French don't ask themselves, "What would Napoleon do?" But Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and Adams built our country, wrote our user's manuals--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution--and ran the nation while it was still under warranty and could be returned to the manufacturer. If anyone knows how the U.S.A. should work, they did and they still do. Richard Brookhiser has been writing, talking, and thinking about the Founders for years. Now he channels them. What would Hamilton think about free trade? What would Franklin make of the national obsession with values? What would Washington say about gays in the military? Examining a host of issues from terrorism to women's rights to gun control, Brookhiser reveals why we still turn to the Founders in moments of struggle, farce, or disaster--just as Lincoln, FDR, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bill Clinton have done before us. Written with Brookhiser's trademark eloquence--and a good dose of wit--while drawing on his deep knowledge of American history, What Would the Founders Do? sheds new light on the disagreements and debates that have shaped our country from the beginning. Brookhiser challenges us to think and act with the clarity that the Founders brought to the task of making a democratic country. Now, more than ever, we need these creators of America--argumentative, expansive, funny know-it-alls--to help us solve the issues that threaten to divide us.

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ISBN
978-0-46500-819-3
Publisher
Perseus Books Group


REVIEWS

Library Journal

Reviewed on May 1, 2006

American social and political leaders regularly interpret the Founding Fathers� ideas as outlined in the U.S. Constitution, selecting certain principles to promote current goals or policies. Brookhiser (Rules of Civility: The 110 Precepts That Guided Our First President in War and Peace) uses the Founders� written and oral statements to imagine their thoughts conc...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

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