To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders - Softcover

Bailyn, Bernard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375713085 ISBN 13: 9780375713088

Publisher: Vintage, 2004

Synopsis

Two time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bernard Bailyn has distilled a lifetime of study into this brilliant illumination of the ideas and world of the Founding Fathers. In five succinct essays he reveals the origins, depth, and global impact of their extraordinary creativity.

The opening essay illuminates the central importance of America’s provincialism to the formation of a truly original political system. In the chapters following, he explores the ambiguities and achievements of Jefferson’s career, Benjamin Franklin’s changing image and supple diplomacy, the circumstances and impact of the Federalist Papers, and the continuing influence of American constitutional thought throughout the Atlantic world. To Begin the World Anew enlivens our appreciation of how America came to be and deepens our understanding of the men who created it.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Although the book is written with elegance and vigor, its prose is only one of its attractive qualities. Bailyn's powerful mind is on display in his analysis of the founders' history--never more so than in his essay on Jefferson, the most brilliant essay on that enigmatic man that I have ever read. As searching as that essay is, two others (of five) that use visual images--mostly portraits--show even greater daring. There is nothing commonplace about any of the essays. They all offer extraordinarily valuable insights and, taken together, a most revealing portrait of the founders of the American republic."
--Robert Middlekauff, author of Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies

"Among his many talents, Bernard Bailyn is perhaps our finest and most imaginative historical essayist, and here he brings together five brilliant meditations on problems that have long fascinated him. All involve the creativity, and some the ambiguities, of the remarkable generation who made the Revolution and wrote the Constitution. But To Begin the World Anew is more than another exercise in "founders' chic." It also asks how these deeply provincial leaders, living on the far periphery of Atlantic society, discovered such astonishing resources of intellect and political creativity."
--Jack Rakove, author of Original Meanings

“Every once in a while a book of history comes along that seems to perfectly inhabit its own sphere. This is such a book. . . Within its brief compass it delineates the world of the founding fathers with equatorial poise, clarity, and grace. Early American history is Bernard Bailyn’s choice domain, and for the past 40 years or so no one has been a better guide to the riches it can yield. . . This is a gem of a book.”
–Benson Bobrick, New York Times

“The American Founders. . . seldom have been celebrated with such depth and sophistication and with such keen awareness of their place in the larger history of Western culture.”
–Gordon Wood, New York Review of Books

“If the storms of fashion that have pounded the humanities during the last 30 years have spared the study of early American history, one of the scholars we have most to thank is Bernard Bailyn.”
–Richard Brookhiser, New York Times Book Review

“His thinking is subtle. His style is forceful. And he is not afraid to look ambiguities square in the eye.”
–Anthony Day, Los Angeles Times

“In the great flood of books about the American Revolution that has washed through publishing in the past few years, To Begin the World Anew occupies a place all its own.”
–Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

“Deep, creative, brilliant and provocative. In a word: dazzling.”
–Bruce Clayton, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

About the Author:

Bernard Bailyn did his undergraduate work at Williams College and his graduate work at Harvard, where he is currently Adams University Professor Emeritus and director of the International Seminar on the Atlantic World. His previous books include The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century; Education in the Forming of American Society; Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750-1776; The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, which received the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes in 1968; The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, which won the 1975 National Book Award for History; Voyagers to the West, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987; and Faces of Revolution: Personalities and Themes in the Struggle for American Independence.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0375713085
• ISBN 13: 9780375713088
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208