I Love Cynics!

Been a while since I’ve posted a book review. Recently completed the book Founding America: Documents from the Revolution to the Bill of Rights (Barnes & Noble Classics).

I won’t beat around the bush, this is a difficult book to finish. It’s long, and let’s face it, standard English has changed a lot since the late 1700s. However, if you don’t mind looking up an archaic word or two, or the odd rules of grammar, punctuation, and spelling and the occasional two page paragraphs, the history in this book is fascinating.

As the title suggests, this book is a collection of documents, letters and speeches from 1773 to 1789, pivotal years at the formation of our nation. From these documents the personalities at the core of our new government become apparent. Arguments on how the new government should be structured are debated and decided.

There’s a lot of redundancy in this book, which could be a tad frustrating. Nearly identical version and drafts of various documents, such as the Bill of Rights, are grouped together. Still, it’s interesting to see what’s in one version and what’s been left out of another.

The Federalist 10 should be required reading in school. It’s probably one of the easiest to read and understand documents explaining how a republic such as ours could work. How a diversity of interests can produce a cohesive government answerable to the people. The books low price is worth it just for reading this. I’d never read any of the Federalist Papers before. Madison was an excellent writer who knew how to explain things in a fairly easy to understand fashion.

In all, a long, occasionally dull, read but well worth it for the gems of writing and history it contains.