Founding Partisans

A Kirkus Reviews Best History Book of 2023

“A compelling retelling…[Brands’s] industry is intimidating, as is his ability to blend efficient research with solid prose. Brands puts these to good use in Founding Partisans.“—Washington Post

”Founding Partisans reads less like a work of history than a journalist’s insider account of high politics, except here the intemperate, backbiting quotations come from sources who are safely dead rather than anonymous.“—Wall Street Journal

“An engaging examination of the early period of the country’s history. But a reader cannot help but believe that this volume is intended to help Americans navigate the current brawl of politics… [Founding Partisans] illuminates the chinks in the American political system as much as the suppleness of it.“—Boston Globe

“The author writes with a sharp and absorbing style, turning what could be a fairly dry topic into a highly readable tale worthy of a cable miniseries with backstabbing characters, high drama, shady deals, and huge egos all clashing to determine the course of the new country. For anyone who thinks that gridlock and partisan machinations are a recent development, this book will quickly lay those misconceptions to rest.“—New York Journal of Books

“Mr. Brands has a genius for plotting out real events; a novelist could hardly do better”—New York Sun

“As H.W. Brands reminds us in this absorbing new book, partisanship is an ancient, indeed perennial, force in human affairs. From the early hours of the Republic, Americans of good will have struggled to ensure that party feeling be not reflexive but reflective. On that distinction, the Founders understood, hangs the fate of popular government.“—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of American Lion

“An essential book for understanding the foundation of American partisanship.”—Kirkus Reviews Starred Review

“Revolutionary War buffs will relish this.“—Publishers Weekly

“Brands’ storytelling prowess preserves the debaters’ individual personalities and clearly constructs the grand narrative of the Convention’s crafting of one of the political world’s greatest documents.”—Booklist

H. W. BRANDS holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written more than a dozen biographies and histories, including The General vs. the President, a New York Times bestseller, and Our First Civil War, his most recent book. Two of his biographies, The First American and Traitor to His Class, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

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