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Mount Rushmore: The Wisdom of our Fathers

Program #15396

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	“What Would the Founders Do?: Our Questions, Their Answers” by Richard Brookhiser A lively, timely, and surprising exploration of how America's Founding Fathers would handle the most controversial issues facing the nation today—from the acclaimed popular historian Richard Brookhiser. While this book covers more than the Presidents on Mt. Rushmore, it will open the door to the type of questions we’ll attempt to explore in this program.

	“His Excellency: George Washington” by Joseph Ellis In His Excellency, Joseph Ellis shows Washington as a plantation owner, military leader, and president of a young and fragile country. He was not a genius at many of his endeavors. He needed the slaves to stave off bankruptcy and he lost more military battles than he won. Yet he was a man aware of his place in history and careful to not let his own role obscure the efforts to launch a new country. Joseph Ellis doesn't just repeat the details of George Washington's life, but he shows how they shaped him as a man and a leader.

	“American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson” by Joseph J. Ellis For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight--and not only during his active political career. After 1809, his longed-for retirement was compromised by a steady stream of guests and tourists who made of his estate at Monticello a virtual hotel, as well as by more than one thousand letters per year, most from strangers, which he insisted on answering personally. In his twilight years Jefferson was already taking on the luster of a national icon, which was polished off by his auspicious death (on July 4, 1896); and in the subsequent seventeen decades of his celebrity--now verging, thanks to virulent revisionists and television documentaries, on notoriety--has been inflated beyond recognition of the original person. Following his subject from the drafting of the Declaration of Independence to his retirement in Monticello, Joseph Ellis unravels the contradictions of the Jeffersonian character. Winner of the National Book Award.

	“Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” by Doris Kearns Goodwin By shedding light on major events in the revolutionary era, Ellis exposes the principal motivations that shaped our emerging country’s personality. In the first 15 pages we find that many of the issues of the 1770’s are still active debates today. Later as the book reaches its conclusion we find those two great thinkers—Jefferson and Adams—engaged in debate about the value of a new word invented by French philosophers: ideology. As they debated the implications of the word, we today continue to find that our differences are largely a matter of perspective; that only the names and the dates are different today than in the revolutionary era. Another book that is not specifically about the Presidents on Mt. Rushmore is “Founding Brothers; The Revolutionary Generation” by Richard Ellis.

	“George Washington” by Willard Sterne Randall George Washington is the story of a man who turned an impoverished childhood and frequent humiliations at the hands of the mother he feared into a career of rebellion and creation. He learned from the British commanders who rejected him during his days on the frontier how to fight a war of rebellion. When he had worn out and nearly bankrupted his soldiers and his allies, Washington disbanded the victorious army he had forged and resigned to Congress, giving life to democratic government. George III once said that Washington would be the greatest man of the eighteenth century if he could give up power. And he did. Twice. A backwoods fighter before and during the French and Indian War, he employed a largely ragtag army of volunteers and the tactics of guerrilla warfare to defeat the world's most feared military power. His maneuvers to escape direct confrontation would be studied years later and serve as a model for Ho Chi Minh's field commanders in Vietnam. And, most important, as this fresh and authoritative narrative reveals, he exhibited the temperament for leadership in war and in peace, while suffering scoundrels, hardships, and a rogue press bent on his destruction.

	“Thomas Jefferson - Passionate Pilgrim” by Alf J. Mapp, Jr. This revealing volume chronicles Jefferson's two terms as President, his founding of the University of Virginia, and his position as one of the world's most respected figures at the time of his death. "A monumental assessment of Jefferson's character and impact." Eagerly awaited by readers of Alf Mapp's best-selling Thomas Jefferson: A Strange Case of Mistaken Identity, this final volume follows Jefferson from his inauguration as President in 1801 to his death at the age of eighty-three on July 4, 1826. In Thomas Jefferson: Passionate Pilgrim, Jefferson the human being, passionate in his loves and hates, is never lost in a revealing portrait of the public figure. Witnessing Jefferson's actions in private life as well as in the arena of history, the reader learns why this founding father was abhorred by some but adored by many more.

	“In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson” by Nobel E. Cunningham, Jr. Readers travel from the beginning of Jefferson's brilliant political career in Virginia in 1769 through to his presidency in 1800. In one concise volume are his contributions to the Declaration of Independence, his role as party leader and Secretary of State, and his triumphs and problems in revolutionary America. The authoritative single-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the most significant figure in American history. He was a complex and compelling man: a fervent advocate of democracy who enjoyed the life of a southern aristocrat and owned slaves, a revolutionary who became president, a believer in states' rights who did much to further the power of the federal government. Drawing on the recent explosion of Jeffersonian scholarship and fresh readings of original sources, IN PURSUIT OF REASON is a monument to Jefferson that will endure for generations.

	“Lincoln” by David Herbert Donald In the year's most important and compelling biography, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author presents a moving, original portrait of a man who grew into greatness as president. Drawing on Lincoln's personal papers and on the vast, unexplored records of his legal practice, Donald recreates Lincoln's world with immediacy and rich detail. Scrupulously researched and written with style and elegance, this prize-winning biography of our 16th President is written from Lincoln's view, using the information and ideas available to him. The author seeks to explain rather than judge the self-made man who presided over the restless United States during perhaps its most pivotal time.

	“Abraham Lincoln” by Carl Sandburg Originally published in six volumes, Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln was called “the greatest historical biography of our generation.” Sandburg distilled this work into one volume that became the definitive life of Lincoln.

	“Theodore Rex” by Edmund Morris In this lively biography, Edmund Morris returns to the gifted, energetic, and thoroughly controversial man whom the novelist Henry James called "King Theodore." In his two terms as president of the United States, Roosevelt forged an American empire, and he behaved as if it was his destiny. In this sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Morris charts Roosevelt’s accomplishments: the acquisition of the Panama Canal and the Philippines, the creation of national parks and monuments, and more. "Collaring Capital and Labor in either hand," Morris writes, Roosevelt made few friends, but he usually got what he wanted--and earned an enduring place in history.