Subtitle:
Triumphs and tragedies at the founding of the republic. Strange that I read two books starting with "American" back to back. They both involve love of our country, but could not be more different. One a super spy thriller of recent history, the other a non-fiction account of the first 30 years or so of our country. I have to admit that my mind wasn't always as focused as I would have liked it to be while listening to this story of our founding fathers, but I figured if I learned just a few things to fill in my understanding of history, it will be worth it. Many of the main players are familiar to me at least by name, and I have read more about Jefferson and Franklin, and Madison figured in the book about Dolly Madison, but there were many I didn't know about more than the bare basics. I realize how little I knew about even George Washington. When Jefferson was mentioned, I imagined Monticello that I visited about 5 years ago. As I said, much still went over my head, but here's a few things I found interesting:
- The two things our founding fathers did not resolve were the issue of slavery and Native Americans
- --But they did resolve a lot of other things - they were pretty smart
- --The Native American issue was quite painful
- The evolution of our two party system
- --I think by the end of the book I did understand the difference between Federalists and Republicans
- The whole Louisiana Purchase story
- --I never got why France sold it to US so cheaply
- -----They had lost a lot of men in the Dominican Republic from the slave uprising (which I read about in Allende's Island Beneath the Sea
- --I didn't realize that Napoleon was the one to approve the purchase
- --Because communication was slow, the representative in Paris had to make this major decision (though it had to be approved by the congress)
- --I finally get where Louis and Clark fit in to the big picture
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