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First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country
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About This Book
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author offers a revelatory new book about the founding fathers, examining their educations and, in particular, their devotion to the ancient Greek and Roman classics—and how that influence would shape their ideals and the new American nation. On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation's founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders' thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero. For though much attention has been paid the influence of English political philosophers, like John Locke, closer to their own era, the founders were far more immersed in the literature of the ancient world. The first four American presidents came to their classical knowledge differently. Washington absorbed it mainly from the elite culture of his day; Adams from the laws and rhetoric of Rome; Jefferson immersed himself in classical philosophy, especially Epicureanism; and Madison, both a groundbreaking researcher and a deft politician, spent years studying the ancient world like a political scientist. Each of their experiences, and distinctive learning, played an essential role in the formation of the United States. In examining how and what they studied, looking at them in the unusual light of the classical world, Ricks is able to draw arresting and fresh portraits of men we thought we knew. First Principles follows these four members of the Revolutionary generation from their youths to their adult lives, as they grappled with questions of independence, and forming and keeping a new nation. In doing so, Ricks interprets not only the effect of the ancient world on each man, and how that shaped our constitution and government, but offers startling new insights into these legendary leaders.
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Reviews
"The author comments on current politics in the beginning and end of the work, which, on the one hand, apply to classical principles discussed within, but on the other may date this edition in a few years ..."
"With incisive selections from primary sources and astute cultural and political analysis, this lucid and entertaining account is a valuable take on American history."
"Fresh from the 2020 presidential election, there probably isn't a better book to read than Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas E."
"Ricks masterfully documents how examples of city states like Athens and the Roman Republic (before Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon) informed the four aforementioned Founding Fathers and their fellow travelers ..."
"Ricks urges Americans to fix their government so that it protects citizens from the inevitable lapses of a fallible people and, perhaps, even more fallible leaders."
"All are admirable, although several—e.g., campaign finance reform, congressional reform, mutual tolerance—regularly fail in practice ..."
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