Founding Fathers: A Captivating Guide to Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and James Monroe
I downloaded this as a freebie on Kindle the other day, because I thought it would be a good review for me as my class moves towards the American Revolution.
Blah! What a pain to read. I'm on the same, giant paragraph that moves from one founding father to another, one thought to another, with no spacing, paragraphing, or structure. Am I in the prologue? Where are the chapters? WTF is going on? I feel lost in a really bad student essay of verbal vomit.
I'm not sure I can take much more of bouncing from Adams to Hamilton and back to Jefferson. I'll try for another segment tonight, and if this book doesn't straighten itself out, it's in the DNF pile.
9/4 update: It's getting better. I realized that the giant run-on paragraph at the beginning was an unsuccessful attempt at a preface, or introduction.
I would have preferred a Title Page with a Table of Contents. Just saying.
First book completed - Benjamin Franklin. Nicely done, solid 3 stars.
9/8 update: I finished the section on George Washington over a bowl of Special K cereal. Nothing new here on George, simply a familiar recitation of the Revolutionary War and early US history. I wanted something more personal, but I didn't find it here. Solid 3 stars.
9/18: The sections on John Adams and Thomas Jefferson are complete. I enjoyed the short on Adams much more than that of Jefferson's, probably as I find Jefferson too complex a man to be done justice in less than 50 pages. Moving on to John Jay!
9/22: John Jay bored me to tears! I think I need to give this up for a while. I'm sure Alexander Hamilton will have a few tricks up his sleeve. Pausing for a week or two...
Eight founding fathers, give who became presidents.
Captivating History freebie. Most offerings from Captivating History can be read in an hour. These eight biographies take about twelve hours. The quality is high. The book on Benjamin Franklin is shorter than his autobiography. But a great refresher on our first five presidencies.
Very captivating book about the founding fathers. It makes history interesting and palpable by delving into the personal lives of each of the first five presidents of the US and making it an easy subject.
The lives, deeds, heroics and pains were uncovered for me. I had never read much on John Jay, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, or James Monroe. Enlightening, patriotic and real. Excellent read!
In my opinion, this was a very good and informative book that I think is a good beginning if you would like to learn about 8 of the major founding fathers. What I was surprised about when this book arrived, I noticed there were sections in chapters, that I felt sometimes got a little off topic and what the chapter was titled and mostly focusing on. Overall, I think it was a very good book and would recommend it but some parts are very brief. For example, the part for Thomas Jefferson was around 63 pages, Monroe, 70, and Madison about 72. But there are many others that are a little longer like Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.