Revolutionary Characters
Tonight at the Constitution Center, author and Pulitzer Prize winner Gordon Wood will be discussing our nation’s forefathers and his book, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the founders Different? tickets are $15 for non-members, $12 for members, and $6 for students.
Damn. I wish I were still a student.
It seems like a nice book to read. It’s full of history and legend and myth, and then a whole dump of reality thrown in for good measure.
Wood’s essays provide a deeper understanding of eight of our nation’s founders, Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Madison, Adams, Thomas Paine, and Aaron Burr. Our current America is a different world from theirs, and we can’t always relate to these guys.
Hell, they couldn’t relate to themselves either.
Adams despised Franklin, branding him with such epithets as the “old deceiver” and the “old conjuror.” Franklin once dismissed Adams as one who “means well for his Country, is always an honest Man, often a Wise One, but sometimes and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.” (Washington Post)
What Wood does is transform them from their lofty designations (i.e. “legendary”) to what they really were. People. Wood provides us a better understanding of these legends as people.
And maybe through this we’ll have a better understanding of our country.
(buy the book at amazon.com)
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