I want to educate myself. Could you please recommend...

[lildreamer316]

..(since I know there are a slew for each one) good, conscise biographies/whatever of Jefferson, Franklin,Paine (yes, I know Common Sense)etc. of the FF that you think are appropriate? I know my basics (such as taught and run across in my reading) but would like to delve into these people and their mindset more. Anything that has been helpful to you or even entertaining. Or point me in the right link direction? Thanks in advance!:dem:

[orpupilofnature57]

1. "Fart Freely" is a great book about , but more the way Franklin thought.

[bluestateguy]

2. For starters...

Try David McCulloch's "John Adams", as well as Joseph Ellis's "Founding Brothers". The authoritative biography on Madison is still Ralph Ketcham's "James Madison: A Biography".

[Democrat 4 Ever]

4. What bluestateguy said - my recommendations

Founding Brothers by Ellis is a wonderful insight to the lives of some of America's most important early leaders. Ellis makes them flesh and blood humans with an overwhelming desire to be a free nation.

McCulloch's John Adams is a thick tome that really gets into the mindset of colonial America, Continental Congress, the fighting between founding characters and the developing of political parties. You come away knowing that Adams is brilliant, educated beyond belief, patriotic, loves his wife and family madly and is extremely vain.

1776 is McCullough's newest book. It is about Washington that is getting good reviews. I'm hoping to read it soon. Washington wasn't what you call a natural military leader but he would not give up. Overwhelming odds, against a precision fighting army, outnumbered, out armed, low rations, lower moral, very little battle experience Washington cobbles together an army the wins against a super power.

I, also, still advocate to anyone who will listen to get Homegrown Democrat by Garrison Keillor. It is not history, per se, but it is an excellent feel good book on why Democrats are so important to this country. Homespun humor with a kick in the pants on why this country would not be as good as it is today without Democrats. With today's media we need the reminding from time to time. Upon reading you will realize that liberal is not a four-letter word to be whispered in shame.

[TomClash]

3. Non-biographies

Bernard Bailyn - "Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" is a classic

Gordon Wood's "The American Revolution" is also very good.

[Sgt. Baker]

5. I really enjoyed

this book. http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/FF.html
The link has the full text of the book with permission to do so from the author.

It's called "Forgotten Founders" It's about the Iroquois six nations and how they helped form our United States.

[oscar111]

6. FF are irrelevant. Ideas must pass test today or toss them

Hi,
hope you dont mind an irreverent post.

I say, the FF should not be a frame with which to imprison your thinking.

FF are such for many.

We today should be guided by good ideas, not what someone dead two centuries thought was a good idea then.

The TEST: a good idea is one that reduces human suffering overall.

FF is not a valid test for ideas.
Dont let all the hubbub in countless classrooms capture your thinkinng. Can you toss all that mountain of chatter because you see a better framework , a larger one, for looking at social thought?

Can you "question all"?

THat approach, "question all", is a great shovel for tossing BS... was devised in 17OO by the French Enlightenment... rene descartes... and yet

question all

has still not filtered down to 70 % of humans, nor down to grade levels below college philosophy classes.
They accept many "authorities" and never question the ideas. Result: "ignorant armies clash by night".

toss the stuffy, limited, diminutive thoughts of the FF, and read Meditations by rene descartes. Or summaries of it. The FF were way behind their own contemporaries in france. Why spend time on backward thinkers? Dont let the geography of your birth limit your thoughts.

A longer list of good books is the one of 3O compiled by the RW magazine.. ? human affairs??... The Ten Most Harmful Books of the last Two Centuries {and runnerups}.

A link was posted at DU about a week ago. Of course the Harmful Books are the great classics of LW thought.. i dont agree with them all, but some are really fine books. A post at the fourm here, "Books" will fetch up someone with the link, i am sure.

[Sgt. Baker]

9. Don't mind at all

I skimmed through Meditations after searching on google. That's incredible thought for the time it was written and probably pretty damngerous considering the time and place it was written. It encourages free thought.

I liked the FF book because it is something I did not learn about in school. The government structure the Iroquoi formed was a basis for how our government and states were setup. It still works today. I found it fascinating as a part of American history I was denied in school. I would still recommend it to anyone.

[lildreamer316]

19. Oh no, I see your point, but..

....I am trying to get in the framework/mindset of how we came to be where we are before I try to think foreward, if that makes any sense. I want to know what they were thinking,and then I will expand to what is possible; which I take your suggestion into. Thanks for the input-I look foreward to some great and challenging reading!

[liberalitch]

7. You can read Frankiln's autobiography online here:

http://earlyamerica.com/lives/franklin/

This site is funky..... when you click on a chapter for 20 seconds you get an advertisement then it goes away.....

[liberalitch]

8. Locke's second treatise of civil goverment

Read that online here:

http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtreat.htm

[Sgt. Baker]

12. Locke

Locke had some good ideas but I don't agree with him. One major thing I have a huge problem with is his exclusion of Athiests and Roman Catholics from the rights he promotes in the treatise. Based solely on religious beliefs he determines that they are not worthy of these rights.

I have had several fundies throw out Locke to back up their beliefs of a religious based government.

Just an FYI. :hi:

[liberalitch]

13. I just put Locke out there because I knew that he was a...

major influence on jefferson

Life, liberty and property was merely changed to life liberty and happiness

[Sgt. Baker]

15. no prob

He did have some great ideas but that one part just ruins ot for me.

Jefferson however is one of my favorite people of all time.

[liberalitch]

16. Jefferson was our davinci....

just as davinci was the epitome of the renaissance man, Jefferson was the epitome of what it meant to be an american

[Sgt. Baker]

18. That why

My sons middle name is Jefferson. :)

[mcscajun]

10. Three good choices

"In Pursuit of Reason: The life of Thomas Jefferson" by Noble E. Cunningham, Jr.

"The Adams Chronicles: Four Generations of Greatness" by Jack Shepherd

"The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin"

I've read all of those, and I don't intend to stop there. I like to read more than just one book on a subject of interest. :)

You can't go wrong learning as much as you can about our history, how we came to be a nation and what kind of men they were who shaped our beginning. A little knowledge of that is helpful to counter the sometimes outrageous claims of the RW where our founders are concerned.

[OBrien]

11. JQA

I would recommend John Quincy Adamns A Public Life a Private Life by Paul C Nagel. Wonderful personal biography. Also, Nagel wrote The Adamns Women. I love this book. It says a lot of what the women sacrficed for this country. Nagels biographies read like novels. He's a very grifted writer.

[liberalitch]

14. Oh, oh and Alexis De Tocqueville

Democracy in America

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/home.html

[Trajan]

17. Look people: Jefferson, Franklin and Paine, et al, are NOT Gods ...

They are philosophers ... the fact that they my have been 'founding fathers' is irrelevent, a red herring ....

These are thinkers one could place next to (or relatively close to) Erasmus, Aristotle, Plato, Hobbes, Aquinas, etc, on the bookshelf ...

The fact that some were FF, or that some excluded atheists from their utopian worldviews (I am atheist AND EXcatholic), is irrelevant ... They still make SOME contribution to human thought and political philosophy ...

Cutting one's self from knowledge because one might disagree with a few of the tenets presented would deny us nearly EVERY written work known to mankind ....

I agree with NOTHING 100 % ; should I therefore NOT read ANY such materials ? .... Seems a ludicrous and extreme response ....

Read EVERYTHING ....

[liberalitch]

21. The most important tool that malcolm X acquired in his quest for truth and

Islam was the knowledge that one should read anything and everything.

Reading = knowledge = power

[lildreamer316]

20. Thanks to all for the great suggestions!

I've got my work cut out for me! Now to find the funding for the bookstore....:think:

[mcscajun]

22. One word: Library.

As in get thee to one. :)