American Creation or Tell Me how This Ends

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic

Author: Joseph J Ellis

Acclaimed historian Joseph J. Ellis brings his unparalleled talents to this riveting account of the early years of the Republic.

The last quarter of the eighteenth century remains the most politically creative era in American history, when a dedicated group of men undertook a bold experiment in political ideals. It was a time of both triumphs and tragedies—all of which contributed to the shaping of our burgeoning nation. Ellis casts an incisive eye on the gradual pace of the American Revolution and the contributions of such luminaries as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, and brilliantly analyzes the failures of the founders to adequately solve the problems of slavery and the treatment of Native Americans. With accessible prose and stunning eloquence, Ellis delineates in American Creation an era of flawed greatness, at a time when understanding our origins is more important than ever.

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

This book consists of seven essays (none of which has been previously published in its current form) and a brief afterword in which Ellis continues his exploration of the reality, as opposed to the mythology, of the founding. It can be argued, of course, that in the past there is no "reality," no final truth, only what historians and others choose to make it, but historians can explore that past free of hagiography on the one hand or, on the other, the ideological biases that color so much of what passes for scholarly history these days. Ellis, who teaches history at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, gives the founders their full due but insists that they made serious mistakes—they failed to end slavery, "or at least to adopt a gradual emancipation scheme that put it on the road to extinction," and they failed "to implement a just and generous settlement with the Native Americans"—and that blind luck gave them a mighty assist.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

Mr. Ellis's new book, American Creation, is very much a bookend to Founding Brothers, another series of meditations upon the Revolutionary generation and its triumphs and failures in inventing the United States of America…Although this book is highly discursive and at times unfocused, it is animated by Mr. Ellis's consummate familiarity with his subject matter and his ability—on dazzling display in his books on John Adams (Passionate Sage), Thomas Jefferson (American Sphinx) and George Washington (His Excellency)—to show how character informs decision making and how friendships and rivalries among the founders shaped the birth of the infant nation…It is Mr. Ellis's achievement in this volume that he once again leaves us with a keen appreciation of the good fortune America had in having the right men in the right places at the right times…

The New York Times Book Review - Jon Meacham

If…I were to note the familiar contradictions of the birth of the nation—chiefly the triumph of liberty, but only for propertied white men—and say that Ellis has written an entertaining account of, as his subtitle has it, the "triumphs and tragedies" of the founding, there would not be much new for me to say, or for you to read, either in this review or in Ellis's book. It is difficult to imagine an educated American who does not know that the Revolution was selective and that the Revolutionaries, many of them slaveholders who were complicit in the bloodthirsty treatment of Indians, were flawed and imperfect. But Ellis rescues his enterprise by going beyond the familiar critique of the founding to explore a point that remains underappreciated: that America was constructed to foster arguments, not to settle them…Ellis shares the founders' tragic sensibility, finding redemption in seeking the good rather than in achieving the perfect. The wisdom of the American founding lies in the recognition that the former is possible, and the latter is not.

Publishers Weekly

This subtle, brilliant examination of the period between the War of Independence and the Louisiana Purchase puts Pulitzer-winner Ellis (Founding Brothers) 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 this a holiday season hit. (Nov. 5)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Kirkus Reviews

Pulitzer-winner Ellis (History/Mt. Holyoke Coll.; His Excellency: George Washington, 2004, etc.) tells six stories, each revealing the genius and the shortcomings of the Founders. Though he covers roughly the same historical period as Jay Winik's recent, magisterial The Great Upheaval (2007), Ellis focuses almost exclusively on Americans, highlighting select issues and events that shaped the young republic and continue to inform its character today. Rejecting caricatures of the Founders as either demigods or demons, he presents them as talented but flawed, enmeshed in and attempting desperately to control difficulties where their blindspots sometimes proved greater than their brilliance. They knew, for example, that the policy of removing Indians from their lands and the institution of African slavery were incompatible with the revolution's republican values, but they were unable to summon the will and the courage required to put a stop to either. Ellis examines both failures in chapters devoted to the doomed 1789 treaty with the Creek Nation and an especially thought-provoking discussion of the Louisiana Purchase, where, he maintains, the United States missed the last, best opportunity to resolve the slavery issue peacefully. Other passages deal with the Founders' high achievement: how ardent separationists shrewdly prepared the country for a slow-motion revolution, how they diplomatically and militarily prosecuted the first successful colonial war for independence in modern times, how they ingeniously constructed a government that located sovereignty in multiple, overlapping sources, how they-even against the noble conventions of the 18th century-absorbed the emergence of politicalparties to channel the ongoing debate about the country's future. Through these stories, each tied to a roughly specific moment in time (e.g., the Valley Forge winter, the 1788 Virginia Ratifying Convention), Ellis examines a well-known-but rarely better understood-cast of characters (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Paine, Franklin and others), shuffling them to the back or foreground, demonstrating how their varied talents came into play for good or ill depending on the issue at hand. Sharply conceived and smoothly executed-a worthy addition to Ellis's already well-advanced project of lucidly explaining the nation's early history to his countrymen. First printing of 650,000. Agent: John Taylor (Ike) Williams/Kneerim & Williams

Books about: Something to Talk About or Dishing Up Maine

Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way Out of Iraq

Author: Linda Robinson

After a series of disastrous missteps in its conduct of the war, the White House in 2006 appointed General David Petraeus as the Commanding General of the coalition forces. Tell Me How This Ends is an inside account of his attempt to turn around a failing war.

Linda Robinson conducted extensive interviews with Petraeus and his subordinate commanders and spent weeks with key U.S. and Iraqi divisions. The result is the only book that ties together military operations in Iraq and the internecine political drama that is at the heart of the civil war.

Replete with dramatic battles, behind-doors confrontations, and astute analysis, the book tells the full story of the Iraq War’s endgame, and lays out the options that will be facing the next president when he or she takes office in January 2009.

The New York Times - James Traub

…a first-rate piece of work, probing and conscientious, though reading a good-news book about one of America's all-time bad-news stories can take some getting used to…Robinson leaves the reader feeling that, however the war turns out, our country owes David Petraeus a debt of gratitude.

Library Journal

Robinson (author in residence, Johns Hopkins Univ.; Masters of Chaos ) tackles a subject that has been the focus of the nation's attention since 2003. Although it can be easy to overlook yet another book on Iraq, she brings an insider's perspective to the subject. Based on her reporting, interviews, travels to Iraq, and unpublished sources, her book focuses on both military and political issues, lessons learned in the early years of the war, General Petraeus's approach to the latter phase of the war, the results of his approach, and suggestions for the next administration. Robinson does a great job of refreshing the reader's memories about events in Iraq before and after Petraeus; however, her own right-leaning political beliefs occasionally come through, and some readers may find her tone one-sided. For those less well versed in the Iraq War, a map and a list with the "Principal Cast of Characters" come in handy. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries.-Jenny Seftas, Southwest Florida Coll. Lib., Fort Myers

Table of Contents:

Principal Cast of Characters

Map of Baghdad

1 The Genesis of a Civil War 1

2 A Failing War, and the Decision to Surge 25

3 David Howell Petraeus 47

4 The Petraeus Team launches 85

5 Fardh al-Qanoon, the Baghdad Security Plan 119

6 The Political Puzzle 141

7 Downsizing Expectations 169

8 The Blue spaders in the Inferno 181

9 The Knights of Ameriya 217

10 The Sons of Iraq 251

11 Full-Court Press 271

12 The September Reckoning 293

13 The Drawdown Begins, and the Cease-Fire Spreads 307

14 To the Brink Again 327

15 Tell Me How This Ends 345

Acknowledgments 365

Notes 369

Selected Bibliography 389

Index 393