March 2024 Book, American Dialogue: The Founders and Us

 

Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at 6:30 at Guilford Free Library. 

 In American Dialogue, Ellis divides four chapters into two parts each: Then and Now. 

Each chapter focuses on what he identifies as four enduring issues that are more salient and challenging in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Ellis establishes the historical foundation for each subject and then examines the complexity of each in the context of a divisive political climate complicated by domestic and international obstacles. 

Acknowledging that a true conversation with the founders is obviously impossible, he attempts to connect their concerns regarding these controversial topics with those of modern America. Hence, his use of the term dialogue in his title. 

The four areas he identifies are race, equality, law, and foreign policy. In each case, Ellis chooses one member of the founding generation as the central figure with whom to engage in his “dialogue”: For race, it is Thomas Jefferson; for equality he chooses John Adams; James Madison is his focus for law; and for our diplomatic relations abroad he uses George Washington. In the Now portions of each chapter, Ellis situates each current issue “as recent entries in long-standing patterns”. His choice of both issues and founders reflect, he argues, “what is still an ongoing argument about our destiny as a people and a nation”.

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