Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military for the Washington Post from 2000 through 2008 and was on the staff of the Wall Street Journal for seventeen years before that. He reported on American military operations in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan and Iraq. A member of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams, he is also the author of several books, including The Generals, The Gamble, Churchill & Orwell, and the number-one New York Times bestseller Fiasco, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He wrote First Principles while a visiting fellow in history at Bowdoin College.
"Ricks knocks it out of the park with this jewel of a book. On
every page I learned something new. Read it every night if you want
to restore your faith in our country." -- James Mattis, General,
U.S. Marines (ret.) & 26th Secretary of Defense "One of my favorite
works of history in a very long time. I grew up revering Jefferson.
I found him loathsome here, but still recognize that like Churchill
in 1940, a flawed man can move future events dramatically.
Madison's reach was remarkable. Poor Adams remained as miserable as
I had always viewed him. But Washington was my revelation here. I
have never been able to put flesh on those bones, but Ricks has
done it." -- Joe Scarborough"[An] extraordinarily timely book...If
classical culture helped the new nation coalesce, what serves the
same function today? Money? Pop culture? Political activism? And
what about virtue? Does it still have a place in our society, and
if so how might one define it? Interestingly, Mr. Ricks points out
that for the Revolutionary generation, 'silent virtue almost always
would be valued more than loud eloquence.' Of course the opposite
is true now." -- Wall Street Journal"A rich compendium of the
ancient wisdom that Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison
believed they were gleaning from Aristotle or Tacitus, and the
formation of 'classically shaped behavior' in the early
republic...Antiquity mattered, Ricks suggests, because it formed
the intellectual foundation for the revolutionary generation.
Knowing the source of the values they claimed to espouse and the
historical comparisons they took as obvious, we can know more about
the founders themselves -- and perhaps something of how the country
we now have measures up to the one they envisioned." -- Washington
Post"Ricks masterfully documents how examples of city states like
Athens and the Roman Republic informed the four aforementioned
Founding Fathers and their fellow travelers... So the question
lurking in the shadows throughout this engaging political
peregrination is the one the author asks in the epilogue: 'Did the
founders anticipate Donald Trump?'... Ricks points out that even
iconic political figures oftentimes behaved in disturbing ways,
just like politicians do today....It seems the document was
eminently more perfect than the men who created it." -- USA
Today"In this instructive new book, [Ricks] offers a judicious
account of the equivocal inheritance left to modern Americans by
their 18th-century forebears...[He] urges Americans to fix their
government so that it protects citizens from the inevitable lapses
of a fallible people and, perhaps, even more fallible leaders." --
New York Times Book Review"First Principles is a fascinating and
erudite look at how Greek and Roman writers influenced members of
the Founding Generation. From the Harvard-educated John Adams to
the largely self-taught George Washington, the most well-known of
American Revolutionaries, turned statesmen, looked to the classical
world to answer critical questions about the nature of power and
the nature of government." -- Annette Gordon-Reed, the Charles
Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School,
and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of
Monticello"Ricks knows his subject well, and, equally important, he
writes about it lucidly." -- Gordon Wood, University Professor at
Brown University, and author of The Radicalism of the American
Revolution and Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early
Republic"Thomas Ricks's deeply personal, patriotic quest to recover
and renew the principles that animated America's founders testifies
eloquently to the value of historical understanding in these
troubled times. Steeped in the classics, the founders could not
have imagined our world and we are now, more than ever, acutely
conscious of their failure to engage with the fundamental problem
of racial slavery and its enduring legacies. But Ricks offers us a
timely reminder of what the first four, nation-making presidents
could imagine and did struggle to achieve."
-- Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Professor of History, Emeritus,
University of Virginia, coauthor of Most Blessed of the Patriarchs:
Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination"An immersive and
enlightening look at how the classical educations of the first four
U.S. presidents (George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson,
and James Madison) influenced their thinking and the shape of
American democracy....With incisive selections from primary sources
and astute cultural and political analysis, this lucid and
entertaining account is a valuable take on American history." --
Publishers Weekly (starred review)"Ricks does something quite
remarkable: he takes a seemingly academic topic--the Greco-Roman
education of the Founding Fathers--and makes it resonate with grand
relevance....Offering a look at the Founders rarely glimpsed, Ricks
successfully argues that America needs to rediscover its classical
roots." -- Library Journal (starred review)"In First Principles,
Ricks provides us the reading list we would have to undertake to
get close to the Framers' worldview. Ricks is not squeamish about
their collective blindness to the evil of slavery, or its cruelty
and brutality....What the flawed Framers gifted us was a blueprint
of genius that we have since improved upon greatly because of
Lincoln, the suffragists, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the
many other civil rights leaders of that era....Ricks reminds us of
our purpose." -- Hugh Hewitt, Washington Post"The Pulitzer
Prize-winning author offers a new interpretation of the individuals
who shaped our constitution and government. You'll find new
insights into the past from the first page to the last." -- Detroit
Free Press"In First Principles, a lively and accessible synthesis
of the work of generations of historians and his own reading of the
letters, speeches, and pamphlets of Washington, Adams, Jefferson,
and Madison, Ricks assesses the influence of classical public
philosophy and practice on politics in America in the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries -- and draws conclusions
about the country we have become."
-- Psychology Today"An exploration of the major influences of
America's first four presidents...[In 2016 Ricks asked, ] 'What
kind of nation do we now have? Is this what was designed or
intended by the nation's founders?'...[He] reassures readers that
the durable Constitutional order can handle a Donald Trump, and he
concludes with 10 strategies for putting the nation back on
course...Penetrating history with a modest dollop of optimism." --
Kirkus Reviews"Well informed, gracefully written and brimming with
contemporary relevance." -- Bookreporter.com"First Principles
stands alone as an important work on the Revolutionary period." --
Journal of the American Revolution
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
