American Connections: The Founding Fathers. Networked.

by James Burke

Using the unique approach that he has employed in his previous books, author, columnist, and television commentator James Burke shows us our connections to the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence. Over the two hundred-plus years that separate us, these connections are often surprising and always fascinating. Burke turns the signers from historical icons into flesh-and-blood Some were shady financial manipulators, most were masterful political operators, a few were good human beings, and some were great men. The network that links them to us is also peopled by all sorts, from spies and assassins to lovers and adulterers, inventors and artists. The ties may be more direct for some of us than others, but we are all linked in some way to these founders of our nation.

If you enjoyed Martin Sheen as the president on television's The West Wing , then you're connected to founder Josiah Bartlett. The connection from signer Bartlett to Sheen includes John Paul Jones; Judge William Cooper, father of James Fenimore; Sir Thomas Brisbane, governor of New South Wales; an incestuous astronomer; an itinerant math teacher; early inventors of television; and pioneering TV personality Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, the inspiration for Ramon Estevez's screen name, Martin Sheen.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Science, Biography

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

James Burke is a Northern Irish science historian, author and television producer best known for his documentary television series called Connections, focusing on the history of science and technology leavened with a sense of humour.

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book I should totally love - "six degrees" of separation between the signers of the Declaration of Independence and present day. It was really cool how the author would start each chapter with the name of a signer and somehow, through a very winding road, end with a different reference to the same person, usually attached to a different person. For example, it would find a way to attach a signer named William Whipple to the president of an agricultural association in 2002 who also happened to be named William Whipple. Great idea, but got old long before the 56th signer was networked.

[Stan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book made me stop reading for a month. The author did great work completing extensive research. Unfortunately I found no relevance or interest to most of it. I had to force my self to complete this work. I am sure there is a place for this but my mind is not one of the places.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a disappointing book to read, and one that could have been so much better.  When a book is praised by someone like Bill Gates, one expects this to be a glorious tour de force of networking expertise.  What one finds instead is the sort of reportage that one would get from the gossip rag at the grocery store checkout line.  Perhaps this is the sort of work that passes for contemporary and hip historical analysis of the founding fathers, a group that has no shortage of historical writing [1].  Nevertheless, this book is not something that I found to be an enjoyable or edifying read, and it is one that gave me rather more pessimism than I had already concerning the relationship of political, economic, and cultural elites.  There was a lot of decadence to be found here and this author celebrates it with reckless abandon.  It is one thing to chronicle decadence and corruption and to note it however sadly or ironically, but this author positively revels in it to a degree that made me uncomfortable as a reader and would likely make others uncomfortable as well.

The basic conceit of this book is to take all of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and connect them through a chain of networks until one gets to somewhere close to the present day with either a person who is somehow connected with them personally or with a different person of the same name.  Thus every chapter of this book--some 300 pages or so--end with the same name that begins the chapter.  Most of the chapters are mercifully short, but they are also largely devoid of any genuinely uplifting moral value.  The author includes a large collection of sources, but overall the connections are an uninspiring lot and they reveal the author's own interests to an unhealthy degree.  A lot of people are connected through evolutionary "scientists," people involved all kinds of bizarre living arrangements, as well as people involved with various businesses and universities.  The author consistently refers to intellectual people as noodlers, as if it was a bad thing, and seems also to have an unhealthy obsession with people who write prolifically but remain obscure in their own lifetime and afterward, a fate that seems very likely to be my own.  At times several different stories intersect with the same small group of people over and over again.

Ultimately, this book is a clever idea that is sunk by the author's love of decadence and corruption.  Yet there is a serious point that can be made here, even if it is not a serious point that I think the author of many of its readers would get.  The world of elites is a very small world--that is true whether we think of art, literature, music, science, business, politics, religion, or any other number of fields.  Moreover, elites from different fields tend to know each other, as this book amply demonstrates.  On top of all of all of this is the fact that many of these elites have corrupt thinking and living.  When you think of moral corruption like adultery and promiscuity and incest--all of which this book is extremely fond of--you will find elites involved in that.  This corruption also seems tied to political and economic corruption, left-wing politics, and worldview corruption, although that may be a matter of the author's own interests redounding back in a negative fashion than in the actual prevalence of corruption among the population of elites that the connections of this book are composed of.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2014...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...

https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2014...

[CJ · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a disappointment. This silly book traces "connections" between the signers of the Declaration of Independence and someone or something with the same name.

Would have been a much better book if James Burke had explored some of the many inter-connections between the signers.

I am glad I borrowed it from the library rather than buying it.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're hoping for in-depth looks at the signers of the Declaration, keep looking. This isn't the book for you. If you're interested in getting an idea of how "movers and shakers," were connected to one another at the time and how some of these connections have created the world we live in, this might fit the bill.

I'm a long-time James Burke fan, so this was an obvious reading choice for me. It's very much written in the way he would present the information verbally, so it's a bit slangy and informal, with lots of sentence fragments. Lines of connection cross and cross again and Burke does display a tendency to be gossipy about the fairly immoral lives that some of the great figures from the past lived.

None of this takes away from the point of the book, which is one of the tenets of Burke's work: history is made up of very real, very human people who made good decisions, bad decisions, and questionable choices that in many cases they would never have dreamed were changing the world. The relationships they had brought together people and ideas that influenced everyday lives down to the modern day.

[Laurel Rupp · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought the book would talk about dynamics between the founding fathers but Not Really. Burke took each of the Declaration of Independence signers and connected each signer to another person then to another and to another, on and on ending with a person with the same name as the signer.
Each connection was a short snapshot of the person, Interesting but way too brief. A really admirable research project by Burke but not engrossing reading.

[RA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Might be one of the most informative and entertaining books I've ever read: History, politics, royalty, economics, art, music, science, discovery, botany, steam engines, literature, plays, museums, etc., all in a dizzying 4/5 pages on each of the signers of the D of I.

[D.L. Morrese · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a clever book, but it's not the one I was expecting when I saw the title. I figured it would be about how the founding fathers' revolutionary ideas were influenced by their reading, contacting, and otherwise hobnobbing with Enlightenment thinkers. (This would still make a good book, if someone would like to write it.) What American Connections provides instead is a shotgun smattering of historical trivia in which each chapter begins with a few sentences about one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence and then 'links' them over the next two hundred years (give or take a few decades) to someone (or something) of the same name. The 'connections' are not causal or significant in any way. They're of the type in which A is linked to B because he once attended a party that was catered by C who later hired D as head chef who married E who was once the mistress of F who... and on until we get back to someone with the same name as A. What makes this kind of a fun read despite its lack of any real relevance to the founding fathers is that, as I said, it's clever, and Burke's snarky prose makes it seem even more clever than it otherwise is.

[David R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Burke cut his teeth decades ago with his "Connections" formula and this book applies same to the Declaration of Independence. But it is too cute by half: Burke ends each chapter where it began, with the name of the signer in some form. The contortions needed to conclude unusual ones like Button Gwinnett's are often pitiful. And some of the cross-links seem contrived as well, as many of the intervening characters (almost entirely drawn from American and continental Europe) seem to repeat a good deal. Burke should have stopped this sort of thing with a much earlier book.

[Al · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed with the book as the author primarily dealt with connections of each of the founding fathers coming forward in time to the present and provided very minimal detail on the founders themselves (defined as signers of the Declaration of Independence)....many of whom are rather obscure...it would have been more interesting to learn more about these individuals.

[Lynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A co-worker introduced my to James Burke and his columns. I love how he can tie people and events and end up at the beginning.