Here If You Need Me
Kate Braestrup, 2007
Little, Brown and Company
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316066310


Summary
When the oldest of Kate Braestrup's four children was ten years old, her husband, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a car accident. Stunned and grieving, she decided to pursue her husband's dream of becoming a Unitarian minister, and eventually began working with the Maine Game Warden Service, which conducts the state's search and rescue operations when people go missing in the wilderness.

Whether she is with parents whose 6-year-old daughter has wandered into the woods, or wardens as they search for a snowmobile rider gone under ice, or a man whose sister left an infant seat and a suicide note in her car by the side of the road, Braestrup provides solace, comfort, and spiritual guidance when it's needed most. And she comes to discover that giving comfort is both a high calling and a precious gift.

In her account of her own life and the events of her unusual job, sometimes joyful, sometimes heartbreaking, Braestrup is warm, unsentimental ("No one is immune to the Plucky Widow story!" she acknowledges), and generous. Here if You Need Me is a funny, frank, and deeply moving story of faith and hope. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—June 5, 1962
• Where—Washington, D.C.
• Education—Parsons School of Design, New School for Social
   Research; Georgetown University; Bangor Theological
• Currently—Lincolnville, Maine, USA

Kate Braestrup was raised in Washington, D.C., and met her husband-to-be, James Andrew ("Drew") Griffith, when they both were students. They married in 1985 and moved to Maine when Drew was hired as a state trooper. While raising a family, Braestrup found time to do some writing, and in 1990 she published Onion, a first novel whose title derives from a nickname for their son Owen. Drew was planning to retire from police work and begin training for the Unitarian ministry when tragedy struck. En route to work one morning in 1996, he died in a car accident, leaving Braestrup a widow and single mother of four.

It was in the course of working through her grief that Braestrup found her true calling. Inspired by Drew's dream of becoming a Unitarian minister, she enrolled in Bangor Theological Seminary, was ordained in 2004, and joined the Maine Game Warden Service as a law enforcement chaplain. In this capacity, she responds to dozens of wilderness emergencies, from lost hikers and accident victims to suicides and the occasional murder, offering comfort and counsel to people in need. She recounted her remarkable odyssey in Here if You Need Me, a memoir filled with insightful observations on grief and loss, life and death, God and nature. Published in 2007, the book was a National Book Award finalist and received the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Nonfiction.

Braestrup has since happily remarried and now lives in Maine with her blended family. In between her ministerial duties, she contributes freelance articles to various publications.

Extras
From a 2008 Barnes & Noble interview:

• Braestrup comes by her writing ability honestly. Her father, Peter Braestrup, was a noted war correspondent, writer, and journalist; founded The Wilson Quarterly; and served as Senior Editor and Director of Communications for the Library of Congress.

• Braestrup's grandfather, Carl Bjorn Braestrup, worked on the Manhattan Project and co-invented a cobalt-therapy machine used for cancer treatment.

• Braestrup confesses: "I knit too much. I knit my Christmas presents, I knit leg warmers for all the children in my daughter's graduating class; I knit hats for all the editorial staff at Little Brown, I knit all the insulation in my house and am thinking of knitting a cozy for the car. My children are convinced that, if the house caught fire, I would save my knitting basket before I'd save them. (Does my knitting basket have its own perfectly good legs? I ask them.)

• When asked what book most influenced her life or career as a writer, here's what she said—

When I was about seven, my mother handed me the book she had just finished reading. "I think you'll like this," she said. "Even though it is a grownups' book." It was Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. It was a memoir of a childhood spent on the Greek island of Corfu. Durrell, the younger brother of novelist Lawrence Durrell, was a naturalist, zookeeper, and early advocate of conservation, and he wrote about the animals he encountered and the family and friends of his childhood with equal affection, humor and enthusiasm. My friend Natasha and I went on to read all of Durrell's books. Quite recently, I wrote to Durrell to tell him that Natasha and I each considered him an inspiration for our subsequent careers, mine as a writer and hers as a wildlife biologist. Unfortunately, by the time I sent the letter, Gerald Durrell was dead. (Author bio and interview from Barnes & Noble.)

Book Reviews
Kate Braestrup's Here if You Need Me can be read as a superbly crafted memoir of love, loss, grief, hope and the complex subtleties of faith. Or it can be read as the journey of a strong-minded, warmhearted woman through tragedy to grace.... The meat of the book is Braestrup's description of her work as chaplain to the game wardens who conduct search-and-rescue missions for the state of Maine. And this element of the memoir alone is enough to make it fascinating, as she describes traveling with the wardens in search of murder victims, suicides, straying children and lost hikers. She accompanies the wardens to give comfort to the loved ones of those who are missing, to attend to the remains of those found dead and to minister to the wardens themselves…In Here if You Need Me, she allows us to stand with her while she ministers to those who are lucky enough to have the remarkable, steady, peaceful and wise Kate Braestrup to comfort them.
Jane Ciabattari - Washington Post

Braestrup's narration about her work as a chaplain with Maine's fish and game wardens is filled with the same comfort she offers those she ministers to. Her friendly, easygoing northeastern-accented voice is instantly soothing whether she is talking about the happy outcome of a search-and-rescue mission or her husband's tragic death, which spurred her on the road to her new job. Her reading has an often prayerful cadence, though she goes easy on Bible quotation and her discussions of theological issues are so wise and well-thought-out that even the nonreligious won't be put off. Mixed with cute stories about raising her four kids, she offers keenly observed anecdotes about what she's seen on the job, accompanying wardens as they pick up fishermen without permits or search for kids lost in the woods. "My job is so cool," Braestrup repeats often, and her enthusiasm comes through clearly in her lively narration. Whether listeners are in need of a reassuring voice, Braestrup's brief memoir embraces in a most welcome, heartwarming way.
Publishers Weekly

Braestrup understands that women aren't always allowed the luxury of solitude during the grieving process. After her husband, Drew, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a car accident, she was left to explain the loss to their four children while trying to maintain her own equilibrium. Amazed by the outpouring of kindness-which included brownies from a neighbor with whom she had only a nodding acquaintance and enough casseroles to fill the family freezer- Braestrup decides that God can be found where there is love. Drew had intended to become a Unitarian Universalist minister when the time came for him to retire, continuing to be of service to his brothers and sisters in arms. In the midst of the many changes in her life, Braestrup chose to attend divinity school with the idea of completing Drew's dream. Here if You Need Me is the story of how she makes her husband's dream her own and eventually becomes the chaplain for Maine's Wildlife and Game Service. Braestrup's strength is evident throughout the memoir, which is by turns funny, tender, and frightening, yet always reinforced by the undercurrent of great love. Here If You Need Me is recommended for public libraries.
Pam Kingsbury - Library Journal

The life-and-death experiences of the first female chaplain in the Maine Warden Service. Novelist and journalist Braestrup (Onion, 1990) became a Unitarian Universalist minister after her husband was killed in a car accident. He had planned to join the ministry after he retired from the Maine State Police, and she decided to honor his memory by achieving his goal and devoting herself to law-enforcement-related service. Her stories of search-and-rescue operations in the Maine woods make it clear that she quickly became very good at helping others. When disaster struck, she traveled with the wardens, clad in the same uniform but with a plastic clerical collar attached, sharing their jokes, their cold and discomfort and their bad meals. Though they gently taunted her with such nicknames as "Holy Mother" and "Your Holiness," the wardens seemed to enjoy having Braestrup along and to value her presence. It freed them up to do their own jobs when she reached out to provide on-the-spot comfort to the parents of a lost child, the wife of a man who disappeared while ice fishing, as well as other frightened, stressed-out and grief-stricken people. Interspersed among accounts of violent death and dismemberment in the wilderness are sweeter, sadder essays: detailed recollections of preparing her husband's body for cremation; confessions of her paranoia about their four children's safety; and surprisingly unorthodox thoughts on heaven and hell, miracles, prayer and Jesus. Braestrup's occasionally self-mocking prose conveys a warmth and humor that lighten some heartbreaking, even gruesome scenes. Her characters and story lines seem custom-made for a high-quality television series. A heartening book about applied theology by someone practicing her faith in a rough-and-tumble world.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Kate Braestrup admits that before serving as chaplain to the Maine Warden Service, she had little idea of what the position entailed, joking that people ask her "What does a warden service chaplain do? Bless the moose?" (p. 62) Did you know the role that game wardens play prior to reading Here if You Need Me? Were you in a situation that required the Warden Service, would you want the assistance of a chaplain?

2. In the Author's Note, Kate writes that her favorite definition of the Greek word Logos is "story." Of the many stories Kate tells in Here if You Need Me from her role as Warden Service chaplain, which was your favorite?

3. When Kate was a child, she believed she experienced a vision of Jesus Christ from her family's car, only to find a few days later it was a fiberglass statue placed in a memorial garden. Have you ever encountered an unexplainable situation? Like Kate, did you eventually find the explanation?

4. Early on Kate writes "I love my uniform. Quite apart from whatever unwholesome sartorial fetish this may reflect, my uniform is so useful." (p. 64) Do you share a similar feeling about an aspect of your profession? If so, what is the cause of the attachment?

5. Although Drew was employed as a Maine State Trooper, Kate writes he had planned to begin a second "career" as a minister. Have you ever considered changing professions? If so, what new occupation would you choose?

6. Upon her decision to become an ordained minister, Kate's brother writes to her expressing his skepticism about religion. How are these email interchanges important to Kate in how she regards her own faith?

7. At one point Kate writes "that's where I still feel most religious; when I'm out in the woods." (p. 186) Discuss the role nature plays in her memoir, both as it impacts her profession and her faith.

8. Kate offers several plausible definitions of the word "miracle", then asserts that "a miracle is not defined by an event. A miracle is defined by gratitude." (p. 181) Do you agree with this interpretation? Did reading Here if You Need Me alter the way in which you view miracles in any way?

9. Near the memoir's end, Kate concludes "I can't make those two realities—what I've lost and what I've found—fit together in some tidy pattern of divine causality. I just have to hold them on the one hand and on the other, just like that." Do you agree with Kate's resolution?

10. At one point Kate offers proof that God has a sense of humor, and despite the tragic events described in the memoir, there are many humorous moments as well. How does humor serve Kate and the wardens she works with in their professional capacities? What was your favorite funny moment?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

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Audition
Barbara Walters, 2008
Knopf Doubleday
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307269546


Summary
Young people starting out in television sometimes say to me: “I want to be you.” My stock reply is always: “Then you have to take the whole package.”

And now, at last, the most important woman in the history of television journalism gives us that “whole package,” in her inspiring and riveting memoir. After more than forty years of interviewing heads of state, world leaders, movie stars, criminals, murderers, inspirational figures, and celebrities of all kinds, Barbara Walters has turned her gift for examination onto herself to reveal the forces that shaped her extraordinary life.

Barbara Walters’s perception of the world was formed at a very early age. Her father, Lou Walters, was the owner and creative mind behind the legendary Latin Quarter nightclub, and it was his risk-taking lifestyle that made Barbara aware of the ups and downs that can occur when someone is willing to take great risks.

The financial responsibility for her family, the fear, the love all played a large part in the choices she made as she grew up: the friendships she developed, the relationships she had, the marriages she tried to make work. Ultimately, thanks to her drive, combined with a decent amount of luck, she began a career in television. And what a career it has been! Against great odds, Barbara has made it to the top of a male-dominated industry.

She has spent a lifetime auditioning, and this book, in some ways, is her final audition, as she fully opens up both her private and public lives. In doing so, she has given us a story that is heartbreaking and honest, surprising and fun, sometimes startling, and always fascinatings. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—September 25, 1929
• Where—Brookline, Massachesetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Sarah Lawrence College
• Currently—lives in New York City


Barbara Jill Walters is an American journalist, writer, and media personality who was first known as a popular TV morning news anchor for over 10 years on NBC's Today, where she worked with Hugh Downs and later hosts Frank McGee and Jim Hartz. Walters later spent 25 years as co-host of ABC's newsmagazine 20/20. She was the first female co-anchor of network evening news, working with Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News and was later a correspondent for ABC World News Tonight (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
A woman with an impeccable sense of timing…There will never be another television news career like this one.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


Breaking news: Barbara Walters wears fake eyelashes, is afraid to drive, gave up her black married lover to save her career (while his went down the tubes). These and other true confessions provide the tabloid interest through 600 pages of the network diva's new memoir, Audition. But it's her heartfelt candor that lifts this book above mere titillation. Finally we learn why Walters is so relentless. It's a question I've often pondered watching her on television after beginning my own TV news career 30 years ago. In this engaging and chatty look back at a life largely lived in public view, Walters provides the answer.
Kathleen Matthews - Washington Post


An unusually ambitious and successful book.... suffused with an emotional intensity…it belongs to a part of American culture that Walters helped invent.
The New Yorker


Audition is brutally honest, both about Walters and those she's worked with. Readers won't be left wondering what she thinks of anything, or anyone, for that matter.... It's a fascinating look at a woman who has lived a fascinating life.
Laura L. Hutchinson - Free Lance-Star


Although Walters writes, "It was not in my nature to be courageous, to be the first," her compulsively readable memoir proves otherwise. No one lasts on TV for more than 45 years without the ability to make viewers feel comfortable, and Walters's amiable persona perfectly translates to the page. She gives us an entertaining panorama of a full life lived and recounted with humor and bracing honesty. Walters is surprisingly candid: about her older sister's retardation, her father's suicide attempt, her midlife affairs (including ones with John Warner—before and after his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor—and a very married Edward Brooke, the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction), her daughter's troubled teen years and her acrimonious relationships with coanchors Frank McGee and Harry Reasoner. She vividly recounts her decision to leave NBC's Today Show after 14 years to become the first female nightly news coanchor, and tells of the firestorm of criticism she endured for accepting that pioneering position and its million-dollar salary. Alternating between tales of her personal struggles, professional achievements and insider anecdotes about the celebrities and world leaders she's interviewed, this mammoth memoir's energy never flags.
Publishers Weekly


(Audio version.) Listeners have two recordings of Walters's 580-page tell-all from which to choose. The abridged version is read by the media personality herself, and other than affording listeners her authentic voice, complete with her trademark lisp, this version is not worthwhile—lasting just six hours, it omits massive amounts of information; notably, Walters's affair with former senator Edward Brooke.In the unabridged version, Bernadette Dunne does a fine job as a surrogate for Walters. The quality of both versions is excellent, and both are appropriate for audio and biography collections in all types of libraries.
Library Journal


and regret are as much the subjects here as religious controversy. Ruefully humorous and tenderly understanding.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to get your discussion started for Audition:

1. Talk about Walters' youth, especially her father's career in show business and its effect on Barbara's own career—her unflagging drive and energy.

2. Walters openly shares the knocks and insults that came her way, both while building her career and even when she reached the top: from Newsweek's "dumdum bullets swaddled in angora" to Saturday Night Live and Gilda Radner's "Baba Wawa." Why such relentless mockery? How well does she seem to handle it?

3. Even as she attained fame, Walter's career continued to stumble—when paired with NBC's Frank McGee or during her stint as co-host with Harry Reasoner on ABC. To what do you attribute this—to Walter's overreaching, to others' professional envy, to the fact that she was a pioneering woman in a male profession...or to something else?

4. Did reading her memoir, change your attitudes about Walters? How did you view her before you read Auditions ... and after? Overall, how does Barbara Walters come across, what kind of an individual is she, what kind of personal character traits does she possess? Do you admire her more...or like her less?

5. Do you feel Walter's self-assessment is frank and on-the-mark? Do you find it honest...or self-serving...or... defensive...or refreshing...or what?

6. Discuss the way Walters deals with her failed marriages and the difficulties she shares with readers in raising her daughter Jackie. How does she treat these painful episodes in her life? Does she accept responsibility for her failures and difficulties, or accept that they are part of the life she has chosen?

7. Which celebrity episode did you enjoy reading about most and why? Which interviewee did you like the most? Admire the most? Dislike the most?

8. When aspiring young newscasters tell Walters they want a career just like hers, what does she mean when she says, "Then you have to take the whole package"?

9. Walters rejects the notion that women can't have it all—"a great marriage, successful career, and well-adjusted children, at least not at the same time." What are your thoughts?

10. In your opinion, to what extent are female TV news personalities, such as Katie Couric and Christiane Amanpour, responsible to Walters for their careers?

11. A fascinating corollary to Walters' book is the question of whether or not women are selected as TV news personalities based on their looks or their talent. Which is more important? When women age, what happens to their careers? Are older women ever allowed to attain the status of a great "grey eminence," like Walter Cronkite or Harry Reasoner or Bob Schieffer? Are they allowed to gain weight like Bill O'Reilly—or even be homely like Dan Rather (well, unless you consider him good-looking.)

(Questions from LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece
Edward Dolnick, 2005
HarperCollins
270 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060531188

Summary
In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's "The Scream."

It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could help: a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world's greatest art detective.

The Rescue Artist is a rollicking narrative that carries readers deep inside the art underworld — and introduces them to a large and colorful cast of titled aristocrats, intrepid investigators, and thick-necked thugs. But most compelling of all is Charley Hill himself, a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm whose hunt for a purloined treasure would either cap an illustrious career or be the fiasco that would haunt him forever. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Marblehead, Massachusetts, USA
• Awards—Edgar Award
• Currently—lives in the Washington, DC area


Edward Dolnick is an American writer, formerly a science writer at the Boston Globe. He has been published in the Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Magazine, and Washington Post, among other publications.

His books include Madness on the Couch: Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis (1998) and Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon (2001).

Dolnick's book The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece (2005)—an account of the 1994 theft, and eventual recovery, of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" from Norway's National Gallery in Oslo—won the 2006 Edgar Award in the Best Crime Fact category.

The Forger's Spell (2008), describes the 1930-40s forging of Johannes Vermeer paintings by a critic-detesting Dutch artist, accepted as "masterpieces" by art experts until the artist's confession and trial in 1945.

Dolnick lives in the Washington, D.C. area, is married, and has two children. His wife, Lynn Iphigene Golden, is a member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family, publishers of the New York Times, and is on the board of The New York Times Company. (From Wikipedia.)

Book Reviews
The little-known world of art theft is compellingly portrayed in Dolnick's account of the 1994 theft and recovery of Edvard Munch's iconic painting "The Scream." The theft was carried out with almost comical ease at Norway's National Gallery in Oslo on the very morning that the Winter Olympics began in that city. Despite the low-tech nature of the crime, the local police were baffled, and Dolnick (Down the Great Unknown; Madness on the Couch) makes a convincing case that the fortunate resolution of the investigation was almost exclusively due to the expertise, ingenuity and daring of the "rescue artist" of the title: Charley Hill, a Scotland Yard undercover officer and former Fulbright scholar who has made recovering stolen art treasures his life's work. Hill is a larger-than-life figure who seems lifted from the pages of Elmore Leonard, although his adversaries in this inquiry are fairly pedestrian. While the path to the painting's retrieval is relatively straightforward once some shady characters put the word out that they can get their hands on it, the narrative's frequent detours to other crimes and engaging escapades from Hill's past elevate this work above last year's similar The Irish Game by Matthew Hart.
Publishers Weekly

The theft of, search for and recovery of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" (the first time). Dolnick (Down the Great Unknown, 2001, etc.), former chief science writer for the Boston Globe, offers a treatise on art theft using as his take-off point the remarkably easy 1994 pilfering of Munch's masterpiece from Norway's National Gallery. The protagonist is an Anglo-American detective for Scotland Yard, Charlie Hill, a Brit of a certain independent type, with scant regard for petty regulations that get in the way of practicality. But Hill's genuine love of the art he pursues personalizes both his search and the book itself. The chase is something of a game for Hill, just as it is to a certain extent for the thieves. Dolnick's narrative, in fact, is frequently interrupted with digressions on famous art thieves, previous art thefts (particularly the 1990 job at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) and short vignettes, among them Charlie Hill's war stories from Vietnam. Readers will discover the ridiculousness of the popular image of a reclusive collector who has paid thieves to steal art for his own personal and private enjoyment. Thieves steal art not for any such reason as that but because it's valuable and relatively unguarded, even in museums. They steal art because it's there. The various digressions slow the pace a little as we wait for Dolnick to get back to the story of "The Scream," which needs no embellishment in its extraordinary twists, screw-ups, coincidences, and quick thinking on the part of Hill and his team of experienced undercover cops. In the end, we're left with the impression that they recovered the painting in spite of the Norwegian police rather than because of them. Sadly, Dolnick makes it clear why another version of "The Scream," and also Munch's "Madonna," could be pinched from Oslo's Munch Museum so easily a year ago-and why both are still at large. Overall, a picaresque tale.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

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Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Joseph J. Ellis
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375705243


Summary
Winner, Pulitizer Prize for History, 2001

An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic—John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.

During the 1790s, which Ellis calls the most decisive decade in our nation's history, the greatest statesmen of their generation—and perhaps any—came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the coming centuries. Ellis focuses on six discrete moments that exemplify the most crucial issues facing the fragile new nation: Burr and Hamilton's deadly duel, and what may have really happened; Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison's secret dinner, during which the seat of the permanent capital was determined in exchange for passage of Hamilton's financial plan; Franklin's petition to end the "peculiar institution" of slavery—his last public act—and Madison's efforts to quash it; Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address, announcing his retirement from public office and offering his country some final advice; Adams's difficult term as Washington's successor and his alleged scheme to pass the presidency on to his son; and finally, Adams and Jefferson's renewed correspondence at the end of their lives, in which they compared their different views of the Revolution and its legacy.

In a lively and engaging narrative, Ellis recounts the sometimes collaborative, sometimes archly antagonistic interactions between these men, and shows us the private characters behind the public personas: Adams, the ever-combative iconoclast, whose closest political collaborator was his wife, Abigail; Burr, crafty, smooth, and one of the most despised publicfigures of his time; Hamilton, whose audacious manner and deep economic savvy masked his humble origins; Jefferson, renowned for his eloquence, but so reclusive and taciturn that he rarely spoke more than a few sentences in public; Madison, small, sickly, and paralyzingly shy, yet one of the most effective debaters of his generation; and the stiffly formal Washington, the ultimate realist, larger-than-life, and America's only truly indispensable figure.

Ellis argues that the checks and balances that permitted the infant American republic to endure were not primarily legal, constitutional, or institutional, but intensely personal, rooted in the dynamic interaction of leaders with quite different visions and values. Revisiting the old-fashioned idea that character matters, Founding Brothers informs our understanding of American politics—then and now—and gives us a new perspective on the unpredictable forces that shape history. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1943
• Where—USA
• Education—B.A. College of William and Mary; M.A., Ph.D.,
  Yale University
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize, 2001; National Book Award, 1997
• Currently—Amherst Massachusetts, USA

Joseph J. Ellis is the Ford Foundation Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College. Educated at the College of William and Mary and Yale University, he served as a captain in the army and taught at West Point before coming to Mount Holyoke in 1972. He was dean of the faculty there for ten years.

Among his previous books are Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams and American Sphinx, which won the 1997 National Book Award. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, with his wife, Ellen, and their three sons. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
As historian Joseph J. Ellis points out in his compelling new book, the achievement of the American Revolution was considerably more improbable at the time.... [A] lively and illuminating, if somewhat arbitrary book that leaves the reader with a visceral sense of a formative era in American life.
Michiko Kakutan - New York Times

A splendid book—humane, learned, written with flair and radiant with a calm intelligence and wit. Even those familiar with 'the Revolutionary generation' will [find much] to captivate and enlarge their understanding of our nation's fledgling years.
Beson Bobrick - New York Times Book Review

(Starred review.) This subtle, brilliant examination of the period between the War of Independence and the Louisiana Purchase puts Pulitzer-winner Ellis among the finest of America's narrative historians. Six stories, each centering on a significant creative achievement or failure, combine to portray often flawed men and their efforts to lay the republic's foundation. Set against the extraordinary establishment of the most liberal nation-state in the history of Western Civilization... in the most extensive and richly endowed plot of ground on the planet are the terrible costs of victory, including the perpetuation of slavery and the cruel oppression of Native Americans. Ellis blames the founders' failures on their decision to opt for an evolutionary revolution, not a risky severance with tradition (as would happen, murderously, in France, which necessitated compromises, like retaining slavery). Despite the injustices and brutalities that resulted, Ellis argues, this deferral strategy was a profound insight rooted in a realistic appraisal of how enduring social change best happens. Ellis's lucid, illuminating and ironic prose will make a ... hit.
Publishers Weekly

Ellis holds the Ford Foundation Chair in American History at Mount Holyoke College and is the author of American Sphinx, a National Book Award-winning study of Thomas Jefferson. His new book contains six chapters on unconnected events in the formation of the American republic, featuring Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and George Washington as principal characters. Ellis is deeply steeped in the literature, and his style is crisp and full of subtle ironies. He brings fresh insights into such well-worn topics as the Hamilton-Burr duel and Jefferson's feelings about slavery. If there is a central theme that runs through the chapters, it concerns the fragility of the early years of the republic. Ellis calls the 1790s one long shouting match between those, like Hamilton, who championed the power of the central government and those, like Jefferson, who defended the rights of states and individuals. The question of slavery was so explosive that most Founding Fathers avoided discussing it at all. Ellis clearly admires the irascible John Adams. Perhaps surprisingly from the author of American Sphinx, however, the Founding Father who comes off least well here is Jefferson himself. Highly recommended for all academic and large public libraries. —T.J. Schaeper, St. Bonaventure Univ.
Library Journal

An outstanding biographer of Jefferson (American Sphinx, 1997), Ellis takes up new lines in this exploration of the "gestative" 1790s.... Palpably steeped in a career's worth of immersion in the early republic, Ellis' essays are angled, fascinating, and perfect for general-interest readers. —Gilbert Taylor
Booklist

Discussion Questions 
1. The anecdote that Benjamin Rush liked to repeat about an overheard conversation between Benjamin Harrison and Elbridge Gerry on July 4, 1776, makes clear that the signers of the Declaration of Independence felt some doubt about their chances of surviving their revolutionary act. As Ellis points out, if the British commanders had been more aggressive, "The signers of the Declaration would . . . have been hunted down, tried, and executed for treason, and American history would have flowed forward in a wholly different direction" [p. 5]. Why is it so difficult to grasp this notion of the new nation's utter fragility? How successful is Founding Brothers in taking the reader back in time, in order to witness the contingencies of a historical gamble in which "sheer chance, pure luck" [p. 5] were instrumental in determining the outcome?

2. Ellis has said, "We have no mental pictures that make the revolutionary generation fully human in ways that link up with our own time.... These great patriarchs have become Founding Fathers, and it is psychologically quite difficult for children to reach a realistic understanding of their parents, who always loom larger-than-life as icons we either love or hate." How does Founding Brothers address this problem, and how does it manage to humanize our image of the founders? How does the book's title relate to this issue?

3. What was really at stake in the disagreement and duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton? If Hamilton felt that the disparaging statements he had made about Burr were true, should he have lied in order to save his life? Was this merely a war over words? Did words havemore significance then than they do now? What role did newspapers play in the drama, and how is the media's role different or similar today?

4. In congressional debates in 1790 about the possible abolition of slavery, Georgia representative James Jackson attacked the abolitionist Quakers as "outright lunatics" [p. 97] and went on to say, "If it were a crime, as some assert but which I deny, the British nation is answerable for it, and not the present inhabitants, who now hold that species of property in question" [p. 98]. Does Jackson's refusal to name "that species of property" point to his own moral discomfort with owning enslaved human beings? To what degree were the founders complicit in this deliberate refusal to name and acknowledge the moral problem of slavery?

5. Because of the founders' refusal to press for abolition, the slavery question was bequeathed to Abraham Lincoln to solve—and the Civil War illustrated just how divisive the issue was. How accurate was George Washington's belief that "slavery was a cancer on the body politic of America that could not at present be removed without killing the patient" [p. 158]? Should the nation's leaders have pressed harder, given that "the further one got from 1776, the lower the revolutionary fires burned and the less imperative the logic of the revolutionary ideology seemed" [p. 104]? What difference might it have made in the racial currents of contemporary American life if slavery had been abolished in the early days of the nation?

6. What does Ellis mean when he says that the public figures on which he focuses in this book were "America's first and, in many respects, its only natural aristocracy" [p. 13]? In what sense is this true?

7. How does the character of George Washington come across, as Ellis presents him and in the quoted extracts of the farewell address? How does Washington measure up to the mythology that surrounded him even in his own time? What qualities made Washington so indispensable to the new nation?

8. Ellis focuses more intensively on the plight of the slaves than that of the Indians, but he does point out that Washington addressed their situation with the suggestion that they abandon their hunter-gatherer way of life and assimilate themselves into the general population as farmers [p. 159]. Was this a viable solution, or merely a pragmatic one? What other solutions might have been offered at the time?

9. What is most surprising about Thomas Jefferson's character, as presented by Ellis? Which aspects of his personality, or which particular actions or decisions, seem incongruous in the man who wrote the idealistic words of the Declaration of Independence?

10. What is most impressive about Abigail Adams's intervention on her husband's behalf in his quarrel with Thomas Jefferson? Is it possible to compare the political partnership of John and Abigail Adams with, for example, that of Hillary and Bill Clinton?

11. Ellis has said of Founding Brothers, "If there is a method to my madness in the book, it is rooted in the belief that readers prefer to get their history through stories. Each chapter is a self-contained story about a propitious moment when big things got decided. . . . In a sense, I have formed this founding generation into a kind of repertory company, then put them into dramatic scenes which, taken together, allow us to witness that historic production called the founding of the United States." Does his focus on creating separate narrative units succeed in making the complex history of the founders simpler to penetrate and understand? Are there any drawbacks to presenting history this way?

12. Ellis says that the founders were always self-conscious about how posterity would view their decisions and their behavior. For instance, Adams's efforts on behalf of a "more realistic, nonmythologized version of the American Revolution" were partly motivated by his wounded vanity, his effort to get rid of versions of the story that "failed to provide him with a starring role in the drama" [p. 217]. How similar or different are more recent presidents' efforts to shape the historical portrayal of their own terms in office, as with presidential libraries and such?

13. Ellis notes that his ambition with Founding Brothers was "to write a modest-sized account of a massive historical subject . . . without tripping over the dead bodies of my many scholarly predecessors." In search of a structure in which "less could be more" Ellis takes as a model Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians (1918). Strachey wrote that the historian "will row out over the great ocean of material, and lower down into it, here and there, a little bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen, from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity" [p. ix]. How does this approach differ from other historical narratives or biographies of historical figures that you have read, and how does it affect your reading experience?

14. In the conflict between Republicans and Federalists described by Ellis throughout the book, readers can understand the origins of party factionalism that is a strong factor in American politics to this day. If, as Ellis writes, "The dominant intellectual legacy of the Revolution, enshrined in the Declaration of Indepen-dence, stigmatized all concentrated political power and even . . . depicted any energetic expression of governmental authority as an alien force that all responsible citizens ought to repudiate and, if possible, overthrow" [p. 11], what compromises were made in order to bring a stable national government to fruition? Does the apparent contradiction between Republican and Federalist principles still create instability in the American system?

15. In recent years historians have tended to avoid focusing on such issues as leadership and character, and more is being written about popular movements and working people whose lives exemplify a sort of democratic norm. Ellis clearly goes against this trend in offering Founding Brothers as "a polite argument against the scholarly grain" [p. 12]. Does he effectively convince his readers that the founding of the American nation was, in fact, largely accomplished by a handful of extraordinary individuals?
(Questions from the publishers.)

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