Gordon S Wood

In this book the author offers an account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812. As he reveals, the period was marked by tumultuous change in all aspects of American life: in politics, society, economy, and culture. The men who founded the new government had high hopes for the future, but few of their hopes and dreams worked out quite as they expected. They hated...

An analysis of America's founding leaders identifies the qualities that enabled them to make pivotal contributions to the country's formation, discussing how their vision of a national meritocracy was shaped by beliefs about character and leadership.

Offers a portrait of the complex, often contradictory figure of Benjamin Franklin, a man who was at once the quintessential American and a cosmopolitan lover of Europe, and a one-time loyalist turned revolutionary.

"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 slave owner, while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist...