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American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic * Joseph J. Ellis * New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007 * xii, 288 pp. * $26.95
Reviewed by Jeff Broadwater, associate professor of history at Barton College. He is the author of George Mason, Forgotten Founder (2006).
Joseph Ellis is one of those rare historians whose books invariably command a wide audience. American Creation should be no exception. It begins, appropriately enough, with a prologue in which Ellis takes to task contemporary scholars committed to writing history from the bottom up and often making it inaccessible to non-specialists. "For whatever the reasons, historians dedicated to a recovery of the experience of ordinary Americans in the past have chosen to abandon ordinary readers in the present, preferring to communicate only with each other" (p. 12). Their preoccupation with marginalized groups and obscure events, especially during the era of the American Revolution, Ellis describes as "somewhat akin to showing up at Fenway Park with a lacrosse stick"...