by Joseph Ellis
Reviewed by Phil Nicolosi

This Pulitzer Prize-winning book highlights the human side of the founders by removing the title “fathers” and replacing it with “brothers” making this eminent group of men more accessible to the reader. It is an excellent book for teachers who are looking for an angle on the Founders which presents them as real-life, human characters during an extraordinary time period. It is also a very readable book for advanced high school students.

History teachers often struggle to get students to read good historical writing: works that are concise and compelling, that demonstrate the sometimes arduous work of a historian, and that employ sound historiography, and still find time to teach sufficient content. This book allows teachers to accomplish all of the aforementioned, and puts a human face on the oft-deified founders. Ellis also allows students to see the historian’s interpretation and use of numerous sources. From works by other historians like Gordon Wood and Gary Nash, to primary sources like letters and petitions from the Founders themselves, Ellis demonstrates that the historian’s craft of constantly reinterpreting the past is not lost in writing a book for a popular audience. As teachers and students of history, reading Founding Brothers allows us to sufficiently cover the content of several topics found in the standard high school history curriculum.

The book’s opening chapter details the famous duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Ellis dramatic style will grab students’ attention, allowing readers to investigate the event like an episode of CSI. Ellis traces the roots of the conflict with an even hand and allows students to see that even with a wealth of documentary evidence, historians can never know exactly what happened during the actual event, but must rely on available sources to make an educated guess. Ellis frequently reminds us that our knowledge can be limited by what sources previous generations leave us. Ellis presents his reader with accounts from both the Burr and Hamilton camps and allows the readers to draw conclusions on what actually occurred on that July day.

Particularly useful for the classroom is a chapter called “The Silence.” In it, Ellis discusses the first Congress’s debate over ending the slave trade and the practice of slavery in the United States. Because episodes like this debate are not covered in traditional textbooks, this chapter allows students to see that the Founders were not infallible when it came to dealing with an institution so deeply rooted in America’s social and economic life. Ellis’s account helps dispel the myth that the United States, as historian Carol Berkin notes, “began perfect and continually got better.”

Founding Brothers is divided into six chapters with each chapter providing a behind the scenes look at a major topic. Topics range from Jefferson’s alleged “dinner party” bargain, by which support for Hamilton’s financial plan was given in exchange for the location of the national capital near Virginia, to a discussion of the complicated feud and friendship of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Each chapter is approximately forty pages in length, which allows the teacher to assign some guided weekly reading assignments. The structure of the book lets the teacher teach the book in its entirely or select chapters of interest and teach them independently. Either way, Ellis’s book will help students come to appreciate the complexity of history, as well as the complex character of the founders themselves.

by Larry D. Kramer
Reviewed by Phil Nicolosi

This book is an in-depth, scholarly study of the role the people played in interpreting the Constitution and the evolution and understanding of judicial review. It is an excellent book for teacher background information and anecdotes. It would be extremely challenging for students, although short excerpts of text and sources could be used.

In this book, Kramer places the people and the courts at the center of his historical narrative, arguing that constitutional interpretation never solely rested with judges and the courts. It was, and has always been, for the “people themselves” to interpret. Kramer, a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan and current Dean of Stanford Law School, debunks numerous myths about the history of judicial review. Kramer traces the evolution of judicial review and explains in great detail how the people have always possessed, and still possess, the power and control over what the Constitution means.Most notably, Kramer explains, through many historical examples, how the “people” in the colonies had extensive control over constitutional interpretation, legal decisions and the courts. By voting, writing petitions, and frequent mob action, the people’s voice was clear. His analysis of how events like the Stamp Act protests and the Boston Tea Party had “legal” backing in the colonists’ minds provide great anecdotes for classroom lectures and can give students a nuanced understanding of the background to the Revolution. Using such anecdotes in classroom lecture and as background to analyzing documents from events like the Stamp Act protests allows students to see that the early rebels, while certainly pushing the limits of legality, were not necessarily scofflaws.

Incorporating the in-text primary source excerpts into lesson plans can challenge the notion that there has always been acceptance of the court’s role as final arbiter. Excerpts from both the Federalists and Antifederalists make the ratification debate and the concerns over the courts more vivid to students. Federalist and Republican writings on the court’s role can buttress a student’s understanding of the Adams and Jefferson administrations. These documents can also be used to demonstrate why the “midnight appointments” were so controversial and “personally unkind” to Jefferson. While students and teachers may find such primary sources overwhelming, the excerpts provided in this book capture the essence of the arguments and can easily understood and examined by students. Having students read and analyze such excerpts individually or in small groups can enhance the notion that good history is complicated by many underlying causes. Jefferson’s gripe against the appointments was not over his concern for John Adams’ lack of sleep that evening or William Marbury’s position, but which principles – Federalist or Republican – would triumph during that period.

Viewed in the light of Kramer’s argument that the people, not the courts have final say making law, Marbury v. Madison, a mundane case with a complicated decision, takes on a new life. As the myth of John Marshall spontaneously creating judicial review fades, the reader finds Kramer’s analysis both illuminating and inspiring. It reminds us to teach our students that the Constitution has always been, and still is, “the people’s document.”

by Christopher and James Lincoln Collier
Reviewed by Bruce Lesh

Decision in Philadelphia provides an accessible and entertaining window into the motivations, personalities, debates, and compromises that defined the federal constitutional convention of 1787.

Although published more than twenty years ago, Christopher and James Lincoln Collier’s book remains one of the most readable popular histories of a transitional moment in the American experience. The Colliers, authors of the often-used novel of the American Revolution, My Brother Sam is Dead, create a popular telling of the Constitutional Convention. Focusing on the major personalities of James Madison, George Washington, Charles Pinckney, Roger Sherman, and Luther Martin, the authors weave the issues and debates of the convention with the personalities that promoted, opposed, debated, and compromised them. One word of caution: the authors’ approach to the convention, its product, and the participants perpetuated in Decision are more reverential than analytical — not unexpected given the date of its publication on the eve of the two hundredth Anniversary of the Constitutional Convention. Nevertheless, the pacing and readability of the text make it a wonderful instructional tool.Within a traditional American history course, the book can be used in several ways. The most obvious would be to have students read the book as a way of discussing the convention. The text also lends itself as a research tool for students who are preparing to represent one of the attendees in a class simulation of the convention. Chapter one, “A Nation in Jeopardy” works well as a counterpoint to the activities found in A More Perfect Union: Shaping American Government, published by the Choices Program at Brown University. The book is divided into four parts. Dividing the text so that students read either Part II: “The Large States and Small States,” Part III “The North and the South,” or Part IV, “The Question of Power,” reduces the quantity of student reading and facilitates a jigsaw discussion of the major issues that dominated the convention. Decision can be a welcome respite from the textbook, lectures, documentaries, or source work that so often dominates classroom instruction.

Though popular history presents certain pitfalls, it can still provide a dramatic entryway into the past for students. This book is a useful resource for classroom teachers looking for a different way to examine the personalities, issues, and results of the federal convention of 1787.

by Gordon Wood
Reviewed by Bruce Lesh

Gordon Wood’s book will provide classroom teachers with a challenging, but worthwhile, examination of the evolution and implications of the founding generation’s political worldview.

Now, almost forty years after its original publication, Gordon Wood’s seminal study of the political transformation in American political culture reminds classroom teachers of the amazing ideological transformation that occurred between the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution. Wood argues that Americans radically altered their understanding of the locus of political power from a belief that authority was embodied in the legislature, to one that located it within the governed. In addition, because common citizens lacked the essential political virtues of deferring individual interests to those of the common good, Wood argues that the political elites of the time created a series of filters, found in the Constitution, to ensure that the political betters would govern the common man. Checks and balances, federalism, the Electoral College, and the indirect election of the legislature’s upper house came to define the barriers between the oft-failed direct democracy and the Republic that was given genesis in Philadelphia in 1787. Much of Wood’s “Republican thesis” has come to influence major American history textbooks and other instructional material.For teachers of the American Revolution, Wood’s treatment of the “Ideology of the Revolution” is essential background reading. His deliberate tracing of the evolution of Radical Whig political thought from its English heritage to its application in the colonies will deepen teachers’ knowledge of the shifts in political theory that fostered the revolution of 1776. Another section that is applicable to most middle and high school curricula is the section titled “The Critical Period,” about the Articles of Confederation. Wood treats the development and implementation of the “league of friendship” in a way that would benefit teachers who are looking to expand their knowledge of this transitional period. Wood enumerates numerous anecdotes regarding the problems both generated by, and left unresolved under the Articles. Wood’s discussion of the “Vices of the System” will deepen any teacher’s investigation into the efficacy of the Articles.

Although Wood’s thesis has influenced textbook organization and other materials of instruction, his book should be explored only by the hardiest of high school teachers and students. Its length and depth of argument sit well above the reading level of most eleventh graders. Nonetheless, judicious use of quotes from the book by an experienced educator will enliven any classroom examination of the political theories behind the American Revolution, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitutional Convention.