John Marshall: The Final Founder

by Robert Strauss

Eighteenth- and 19 th -century contemporaries believed Marshall to be, if not the equal of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, at least very close to that pantheon.

John The Final Founder demonstrates that not only can Marshall be considered one of those Founding Fathers, but that what he did as the Chief Justice was not just significant, but the glue that held the union together after the original founding days. The Supreme Court met in the basement of the new Capitol building in Washington when Marshall took over, which is just about what the executive and legislative branches thought of the judiciary.

John The Final Founder advocates a change in the view of when the “founding” of the United States ended. That has long been thought of in one or the other of the signing of the Constitution, the acceptance of the Bill of Rights or the beginning of the Washington presidency. The Final Founder pushes that forward to the peaceful change of power from Federalist to Democrat-Republican and, especially, Marshall’s singular achievement -- to move the Court from the basement and truly make it Supreme.

Genres: History, American History, Biography

280 pages, Hardcover

Published March 1, 2021

About the author

Robert Strauss has been a reporter for Sports Illustrated, a feature writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, a news and sports producer for KYW-TV in Philadelphia and a TV critic for the Asbury Park Press. Now a freelance writer, his byline has appeared on more than 1000 stories in the New York Times, and in many other publications like the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Star-Ledger, the Philadelphia newspapers, Fortune, Sports Illustrated and even Today's Machining World. He is an adjunct instructor of writing at the University of Pennsylvania and a contributing
editor at New Jersey Monthly.

Reviews

[BookTrib.com]

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin — these are names we all know well, the names of the people who established the structure of our nation as we know it today. Another name should be added to the list ... John Marshall.

Read our coverage, plus a Q&A with the author here:
https://booktrib.com/2021/03/01/autho...

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you imagine this as two separate books that crashed together and mixed inextricably you might be a little more forgiving than I am. But I was excited to read this "biography" of Marshall since I've been reading through the early Presidents and Marshall was a presence throughout, my disappointment was further compounded.
As other reviewers have noted, this is a very messy book. It starts off well with some biographical bits about the famed Chief Justice's early off...and then goes completely off the rails in what I would come to find was the only the first zany tangent among the many in a book of puzzling segues. Some greasy tidbits: a chapter on Marshall's prominent roles in the first few presidencies digresses suddenly into a lengthy section on the other people who almost became president...why does this matter at all to Marshall's bio? Why does that dominate the chapter? Here's another one: a whole chapter on Washington biographers. Oooh, wait: a whole chapter on the "worst of" the Supreme Court. And so on.
You'll learn very little about John Marshall from this book, and a lot of little about a lot of other things that have little-to-no-place in this biography.

[Kevin Fullerton · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book starts off well enough but devolves into a book about other people. After chapters 5, 6 and 7 I stopped reading. Those chapters were about people and events that had nothing to do with John Marshall. Hardly a biography. Seems the author didn’t know where he wanted to go or say. Very disappointing.

[JL · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book comprises about 1/3 biography of John Marshall and 2/3 random vignettes of American history that have little connection with Marshall or each other. There is no unifying theme here, and the overall presentation is a disappointment. Readers curious about Marshall or his time would do much better with one of the many legitimate biographies that are available.

[Haley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm always excited to read a new Marshall biography, but sadly, this wasn't even that. The title "Final Founder" caught my attention, as I have often considered Marshall to be that, but had nothing to do with the substance of the book. After waiting almost 200 pages, the author finally tried to argue that Marshall was our final founder, although rather unsuccessfully. I think the biggest offense in this book is the lack of citations that should have been included, particularly when making such claims such as “Marshall was acknowledged to be the best lawyer in Richmond.” Though the book begins with information about Marshall’s life, it soon devolves into the author’s own scattered thoughts about American history that have no place being in a biography, and many of which were poorly articulated. Out of the thirteen chapters, only seven focused on Marshall, and even those were full of unnecessary digressions that took away from the notion that this is a historical biography. Strauss, who is clearly not knowledgeable enough about John Marshall to write a biography, seems to have wanted to share his views about historical particulars that no one really cares about, and so stuck John Marshall’s face and name on the cover to gain attention. Given that the last few pages of the book are dedicated to Strauss’ own political views and borderline racist opinions about recent events, it is obvious that he had ulterior motives in writing this, and simply chose Marshall to disguise and try to legitimize his work. The book could have been branded differently (perhaps as a light hearted casual read about American history plus some unwelcome partisan discourse) and would have been much more appropriate. I strongly caution anyone who looks to this book for information about John Marshall, and can never personally consider it the “third major biography of John Marshall this year.”

[Sarah Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is accessibly written, far more of a presidential survey history well into the nineteenth century and even beyond than a biography. It is, as well, a survey of court cases, but only the ninth chapter --"Marshall's Landmark Decisions and When Did the Founding of America End?--is what I would call purely biographical, in the sense of Marshall having been Chief Justice. You have to remember that for part of the time he was Secretary of State at the same time.
The book gives a good sense of the chaos our nation originated in, and how bitterly Federalists and Republicans hated each other at the turn of the century. Also (this is a personal caveat) Strauss goes out of his way to mention how important the skill of public speaking was to politicians. Jefferson had a squeaky voice which didn't project, so he let someone else read his State of the Union Address.
Pod Save the Nation may give Biden an automatic pass, but I think that he will find his public speaking skills a considerable bar. I can't understand a thing he says. I think his campaign should be thinking of creative ways to get around this, employing anime and video games, because this form of discourse would definitely resonate with anyone under forty.
John Marshall wrote REALLY well. That's why I took what I thought was his biography out of the public library. Somebody else is currently reading his selected writings.

[Momof4 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kind of understand what Strauss was attempting here — trying to show how Marshall influenced later Supreme Courts. But in order to really do that, you must have some understanding of the man himself, and that is sorely lacking in this “biography” (in quotes, because I’m using that term very loosely). Strauss spends far too much time discussing other historical and political figures, often in laundry-list fashion that serves more as trivia than in depth research, than looking at Marshall’s life and ascendancy to Chief Justice. This makes the book practically useless as a biography.

The title is misleading, which does the reader a great disservice — especially a reader interested in learning more about this man and his place in pre- and post-Revolutionary War America.

Two stars for the factoids about everybody except John Marshall. Those were somewhat interesting, so Strauss gets points for that.

[Jim Blair · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe it was edited by AI, but it's full of awkward or incomplete sentences, material repeated multiple times in the space of a few pages, and flat-out mistakes. The chapter on Marbury v. Madison cites "Stone and McKean" repeatedly in the footnotes, but the book isn't listed in the bibliography. And the authors are actually Sloan and McKean. Even the photo captions are wrong: a statute of Marshall from John Marshall Park is described as being outside the Supreme Court, which is about 10 blocks away. As other reviewers have noted, it's a series of random thoughts carelessly collected into a book.

[Gabby · Rating 1 out of 5]

So bad. The author had left over research from his Buchanan book, so he made this thing. What a waste

[Kevin Zwiefelhofer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written. It is as much about the era, founding of the Supreme Court, the country as it is about John Marshall. Very enjoyable read.

[Doug Caldwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the usual biography of founding father which is why I liked it. Author discusses lots of other events during life of and after Marshall's death in 1835 up to almost current time.

[Seth Funk · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the most boring books I ever read. I couldn’t tell you a thing about this man.