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Gordon S. Wood
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Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different Paperback – May 29, 2007

by Gordon S. Wood (Author)

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A New York Times bestseller!

"Of those writing about the founding fathers, [Gordon Wood] is quite simply the best." —The Philadelphia Inquirer

In this brilliantly illuminating group portrait of the men who came to be known as the Founding Fathers, the incomparable Gordon Wood has written a book that seriously asks, What made these men great, and shows us, among many other things, just how much character did in fact matter.

The life of each—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, Paine—is presented individually as well as collectively, but the thread that binds these portraits together is the idea of character as a lived reality. They were members of the first generation in history that was self-consciously self-made men who understood that the arc of lives, as of nations, is one of moral progress.
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  1. Print length
    336 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Books
  4. Publication date
    May 29, 2007
  5. Grade level
    12 and up
  6. Reading age
    18 years and up
  7. Dimensions
    8.44 x 5.52 x 0.73 inches
  8. ISBN-10
    0143112082
  9. ISBN-13
    978-0143112082
  10. Lexile measure
    1290L
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"Of those writing about the founding fathers, [Gordon Wood] is quite simply the best." —The Philadelphia Inquirer

About the Author

Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University Professor and professor of history at Brown University. His books have received the Pulitzer, Bancroft and John H. Dunning prizes, as well as a National Book Award nomination and the New York Historical Society Prize in American History. They include Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, Revolutionary Characters, The Purpose of the Past, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, and The Idea of America.

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Gordon S. Wood

Gordon S. Wood

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Gordon S. Wood is Alva O. Way Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. His books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution, the Bancroft Prize-winning The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, and The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History. He writes frequently for The New York Review of Books and The New Republic.