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The Founding Fathers: A Very Short Introduction R. B. Bernstein (Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law, Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School)

The Founding Fathers: A Very Short Introduction By R. B. Bernstein (Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law, Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School)

Summary

This concise and elegant contribution to the Very Short Introduction series reintroduces the history that shaped the founding fathers, the history that they made, and what history has made of them.

The Founding Fathers: A Very Short Introduction Summary

The Founding Fathers: A Very Short Introduction by R. B. Bernstein (Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law, Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School)

The Founding Fathers is a concise, accessible 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. 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 that both shaped and circumscribed the founders' achievements as the United States sought its place in the world. Finally, he charts the shifting reputations of the founders and examines the specific ways that interpreters of the Constitution have used the Founding Fathers. A masterly blend of old and new scholarship, brimming with apt description and insightful analysis, this book offers a digestible account of how the Founding Fathers were formed, what they did, and how generations of Americans have viewed them.

About R. B. Bernstein (Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law, Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School)

Distinguished adjunct professor of law, New York Law School and lecturer in political science, City College of New York, Bernstein has written, edited, or co-edited nineteen books on American constitutional and legal history, including Thomas Jefferson (OUP, 2003).

Table of Contents

Preface ; 1 Words, Images, Meanings ; 2 Contexts: The History That Made the Founding Fathers ; 3 Achievements and Challenges: The History the Founding Fathers Made ; 4 Legacies: What History Has Made of the Founding Fathers ; Epilogue: The Founding Fathers, History, and Us ; Chronology ; Appendix ; References ; Further Reading ; Index

Additional information

NGR9780190273514
9780190273514
0190273518
The Founding Fathers: A Very Short Introduction by R. B. Bernstein (Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law, Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law, New York Law School)
New
Paperback
Oxford University Press Inc
20151210
184
N/A
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