Founding Partisans

 

Founding Partisans – H.W. Brands

It’s always a bit of a letdown and mild shock when you come across one of your favorite authors and you end up not enjoying the book. Such was the case here. H.W. Brands has written a boatload of American History – I’m guessing I’ve read maybe 10 of his works. I’ve never been disappointed until this one. Was it the subject matter? The fact that the well had run a bit dry? The fact that I didn’t learn much that I already knew? Was I feeling grumpy?  Probably a bit of all of this.

The subject matter is the first 25 years or so after America’s independence. The focus is the fact that the leaders of the country, like today, really didn’t get along based on their particular politics and ideologies, and so there was a lot of squabbling back and forth.  The main players are John Adams and Alexander Hamilton on one side (the Federalists) and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison on the other (The Democrat-Republicans).

There was actually an awful lot of history to cover during this timeframe, and the author tries to cover it all in somewhat brief snippets.  The main focus, though, is the politics, and it simply didn’t make very interesting reading.  In many ways I felt like I was reading 25 years worth of newspaper articles. What made this reading a bit tougher was the fact that Brands includes a lot verbatim records of what each of these players actually said during whatever  the hot topic of the day was.  This could be a bit of a slog since public figures used a lot more heavy verbiage 250 years ago.  It probably would have been enough to simply summarize what these individuals thought, and maybe include a literal passage here and there, but it’s simply too much.

The saving grace of this book is that it does tell us that partisan politics isn’t anything new. In our fractured political climate of the 2020s, we tend to romanticize the past and think that things were somewhat harmonious in the days of yesteryear, but this simply isn’t the case. This book probes it. However, it must be said that the way this book was written simply didn’t add any feeling or specific insight that was necessary. There have been much better books written about this time period, and the author himself has had masses of success with his other books.

Check this author out. Hie’s great. Just don’t start with this one.