![\"four](\"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/wp-includes\/images\/stars-4-0.gif\" "\\"four")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Joseph J. Ellis, audio book narrated by Nelson Runger, 2000\u00c2\u00a0 by Joseph J. Ellis, 2001 by Recorded Books, LLC<\/p>\n
I enjoyed this book very much.\u00c2\u00a0 Ellis provides a picture of the revolutionary era and five of the primary figures: George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.\u00c2\u00a0 He manages to inject some life into each of these individuals, some of whom died over two hundred years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Ellis also provides great insight as to how we got to where we are today, especially when he describes the beginning of the political parties and partisan politics.\u00c2\u00a0 It is interesting to note the degree of partisanship that arose very quickly once George Washington stepped out of the public life.\u00c2\u00a0 Some of the accusations and character assassination that occurred between the Republicans (Jefferson’s party) and the Federalists (John Adams’ party) goes even further than what we are experiencing today.\u00c2\u00a0 According to Ellis, some of Jefferson’s and\u00c2\u00a0Madison’s actions during the presidency of John Adams even bordered on treason.<\/p>\n
The othe\u00c2\u00a0subject on which Ellis sheds a great deal of light is the Constitution and what it actually contains.\u00c2\u00a0 The one question which was not fully resolved, according to Ellis, is the exact extent of the power of the national government versus the states.\u00c2\u00a0 According to many conservatives, the Constitution explicity reserves all powers to the states which are not specifically given to the federal government.\u00c2\u00a0 From the very start, however, this subject was argued, most eloquently by Adams, who favored a strong central government, and Jefferson, who argued that the power should be retained by the people in the form of states powere.\u00c2\u00a0 So it seems that even the individuals who were most involved in the writing of the original docuement did not agree on this subject.<\/p>\n
The book flows very well and Ellis presents a great deal of new insight into the minds and personalities of these individuals.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Joseph J. Ellis, audio book narrated by Nelson Runger, 2000\u00c2\u00a0 by Joseph J. Ellis, 2001 by Recorded Books, LLC I enjoyed this book very much.\u00c2\u00a0 Ellis provides a picture of the revolutionary era and five of the primary figures: …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[24,20,38],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-four-star","tag-early-american","tag-history","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":751,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions\/751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}