| Description |
1 online resource (1 audio file (9hr., 15 min.)) : digital. |
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digital digital recording rda |
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data file rda |
| Access |
Digital content provided by hoopla. |
| Performer |
Read by Keith Sellon-Wright. |
| Summary |
Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them-including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson-came to deem America's constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. Fears of a Setting Sun is the first book to tell the fascinating and too-little-known story of the founders' disillusionment. As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders' pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America's political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America's constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not. |
| System Details |
Mode of access: World Wide Web. |
| Subject |
Hamilton, Alexander, 1757-1804.
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Adams, John, 1735-1826.
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Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826.
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Founding Fathers of the United States.
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United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1809.
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United States -- Politics and government -- 1809-1817.
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United States -- Politics and government -- 1817-1825.
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| Added Author |
Sellon-Wright, Keith, narrator.
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hoopla digital.
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| ISBN |
9781666103014 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) |
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1666103012 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) |
| Music No. |
MWT13792909 |
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