Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr [Hardcover]

Nancy Isenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 10, 2007

This definitive biography of the revolutionary era villain overturns every myth and image we have of him

The narrative of America’s founding is filled with godlike geniuses—Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson—versus the villainous Aaron Burr. Generations have been told Burr was a betrayer—of Hamilton, of his country, of those who had nobler ideas. All untrue. He did not turn on Hamilton; rather, the politically aggressive Hamilton was preoccupied with Burr and subverted Burr’s career at every turn for more than a decade through outright lies and slanderous letters.

In Fallen Founder, Nancy Isenberg portrays the founders as they all really were and proves that Burr was no less a patriot and no less a principled thinker than those who debased him. He was an inspired politician who promoted decency at a moment when factionalism and ugly party politics were coalescing. He was a genuine hero of the Revolution, as much an Enlightenment figure as Jefferson, and a feminist generations ahead of his time. A brilliant orator and lawyer, he was New York’s attorney general, a senator, and vice president. Denounced as a man of extreme tastes, he in fact pursued a moderate course, and his political assassination was accomplished by rivals who feared his power and who promoted the notion of his sexual perversions.

Fallen Founder is an antidote to the worshipful biographies far too prevalent in the histories of the revolutionary era. Burr’s story returns us to reality: to the cunning politicians our nation’s founders really were and to a world of political maneuvering, cutthroat politicking, and media slander that is stunningly modern.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Does Burr belong in the pantheon of founding fathers? Or is he, as historians have asserted ever since he fatally shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel, a faux founder who happened to be in the right place at the right time? Was he really the enigmatic villain, the political schemer who lacked any moral core, the sexual pervert, the cherubic-faced slanderer so beloved of popular imagination? This striking new biography by Isenberg (Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America) argues that Burr was, indeed, the real thing, a founder "at the center of nation building" and a "capable leader in New York political circles." Interestingly, if controversially, Isenberg believes Burr was "the only founder to embrace feminism," the only one who "adhered to the ideal that reason should transcend party differences." Far from being an empty vessel, she says, Burr defended freedom of speech, wanted to expand suffrage and was a proponent of equal rights. Burr was not without his faults, she concludes, but then, none of the other founders was entirely angelic, either, and his actions must be viewed in the context of his political times. As this important book reminds us, America's founders behaved like ordinary human beings even when they were performing their extraordinary deeds. Illus. (May 14)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In this positive portrayal of the controversial Aaron Burr (1756-1836), Isenberg departs from all previous biographers, deploring their lack of basic research. Although she acknowledges that studying Burr is hampered by the loss of his papers in a shipwreck, Isenberg more than compensates by tapping negative publicity disseminated by Burr's political enemies. Comparing their scurrilous reports with private descriptions of Burr as cultured, well liked, and progressive for the times (Isenberg approves him as a "feminist"), the author argues that Burr's reputation was marred not by genuine defects of character but by political competition. And she details the three episodes on which opinion of Burr rises and falls: his tie with Jefferson for the presidency in the 1800 election, his 1804 duel with Hamilton, and his 1807 treason trial. Making a strong case for revising received wisdom about Burr, Isenberg significantly contributes to the history of the early republic. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1St Edition edition (May 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670063525
• ISBN-13: 978-0670063529
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #467,089 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 108 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fallen hero? Maybe not., May 14, 2007

By 

Robert Busko (North Carolina) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (Hardcover)

To say that Aaron Burr has been vilified by historians is a gross understatement. It seems that hardly a generation goes by without each new group of historians falling into lock step with their predecessors in a general hatred of this founding father. Most recently Ron Chernow in his book Alexander Hamilton, the bile reserved for Burr is obvious.

Then comes Nancy Isenberg and her book Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr. I must admit that I started to let this one go. When it arrived at our public library last week I flipped through it and then put in it on the cart to be processed. Then I picked it up again. And again. Eventually I spent the weekend with Isenberg and Burr. I have to admit that I have started the process of being won over. Nancy Isenberg has spent a lot of time researching Fallen Founder. She includes copious notes which are worth reading.

Burr, the killer of everyone's darling Alexander Hamilton was the son of Aaron Burr, Sr. the president of Princeton University. He was bright, hansom, and a charmer. Is it any wonder that he was destined for success?
Some how, however, history has chosen to mark Burr as a murderer and traitor. Isenberg does a masterful job at examining Burr relative to his time in history.

At 414 pages of text and 107 pages of notes, you'll find the examination of Burr a complete one.

You'll want to read this one slowly.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Revision of the Myth of Aaron Burr, January 28, 2008

By 

Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (Hardcover)

I have long found Aaron Burr one of the most fascinating characters in early American history and this is a superb new biography of this political genius and scalawag. "Fallen Founder" is the first of many biographies of Burr written by a professional historian. Nancy Isenberg is on the faculty of the University of Tulsa. That, in itself, does not necessary mean that this book rises above the many other popular accounts of the life of Aaron Burr, but it does help ensure that the more productive methodologies, themes, and documentary resources will be brought to the task. Isenberg has done an excellent job in reinterpreting this important figure in American history.

"Fallen Founder" rescues Burr from the popular conception of him merely as a schemer, philanderer, dualist, and seditionist. He was, according to the author, truly one of the nation's founders. He had a significant impact on the implementation of the national government and served well in a variety of capacities. He also championed women's rights, the only founder to do so, and made important contributions to political discourse in that arena. His killing of Alexander Hamilton in a duel proved his political undoing, for it finally gave brutal political opponents the ammunition they needed to discredit him. Moreover, the author convincingly makes the case that Burr's western adventure for which he was charged with treason was essentially a filibuster into Mexico used by his enemies to completely and finally destroy him.

In the end, Isenberg corrects the popular historical perception of Burr in "Fallen Founder. She notes that many of Burr's alleged political and personal "sins" were exaggerated and misrepresented by his opponents and enemies. The man was certainly fallible, but Isenberg demonstrates that Burr deserves better and was indeed an important founder. Her book will be a starting point for all future studies of the life of Burr and will aid greatly in understanding the visceral politics of the early republic.

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great and new view on an old villian, July 27, 2007

By 

Shawn S. Sullivan (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (Hardcover)

Fallen Founder, The Life of Aaron Burr by Nancy Isenberg is a wonderfully researched treasure. But, unlike a lot of recent biographies of the era, this is a work that stands out as well researched, even going to lengths to "see" a different Burr than many have come to believe they know. Isenberg dispels myths with aplomb and one can rest assured her detractors will feel she is either a biased historian or a Burr apologist. I believe she is neither, but one who desires to begin to set the record straight on this fascinating persona in America's historical landscape.

Professor Isenberg says it best in the preface of the book. "History is not a bedtime story. It is a comprehensive engagement with often obscure documents and books no longer read.- books shelved in old archives, and fragile pamphlets contemporaneous with the subject under study - all of which reflect a world view not ours. We cannot make eighteenth-century men and women "familiar" by endowing them and their families with the emotions we prefer to universalize; nor should be try to equate their politics with politics we understand. But this is what popular biographers do, and as a result, everything we think we know about Aaron Burr is untrue. It is time to start over."

Fallen Founder is not a "complete" biography in that it spends little time on Burr's youth. Rather it picks up where his influence on the American scene is in its nascent stages. Isenberg does a great job researching the reasons for his politics and his movements and political motivations between Washington City and Albany, New York. Her work on his many years as a political rival of Hamilton's is without parallel. Quite obviously it was the duel between the two that marked Burr's infamy. Sadly, the events that precipitated this, and the end of his political career have really never been well chronicled. Isenberg ends that in Chapter 7: The Ruin of the Vice President. The book might be faulted for being a bit "dense" but it is laden with well researched work so only the best narrative writers could improve upon it. That said, for those who might not want to read the full book, much can be gained from just this chapter. It is a thrilling, if tragic, story.

Isenberg has done a service to all historians with her research and writing on Aaron Burr. She is to be commended, something I imagine she will be, many times over - deservedly so.