Fears of a Setting Sun
The Disillusionment of America's Founders
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Narrated by:
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Keith Sellon-Wright
About this listen
Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them - including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson - came to deem America's constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. Fears of a Setting Sun is the first book to tell the fascinating and too-little-known story of the founders' disillusionment.
As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders' pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America's political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America's constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not.
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Thaddeus Stevens was among the first to see the Civil War as an opportunity for a second American revolution - a chance to remake the country as a genuine multiracial democracy. As one of the foremost abolitionists in Congress in the years leading up to the war, he was a leader of the young Republican Party’s radical wing, fighting for anti-slavery and anti-racist policies long before party colleagues like Abraham Lincoln endorsed them. These policies - including welcoming black men into the Union’s armies - would prove crucial to the Union war effort.
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Excellent bio of a political hero
- By Anonymous User on 03-11-21
By: Bruce Levine
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The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
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Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
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The Words That Made Us
- America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840
- By: Akhil Reed Amar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 27 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Words That Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a vivid narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered. His account of the document's origins and consolidation is a guide for anyone seeking to properly understand America's Constitution today.
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And the words that made Us
- By Anonymous User on 10-17-22
By: Akhil Reed Amar
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First Principles
- What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country
- By: Thomas E. Ricks
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation's founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders' thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero.
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Excellent book, opinionated epilogue.
- By Noetic Seeker on 01-23-21
By: Thomas E. Ricks
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Break It Up
- Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union
- By: Richard Kreitner
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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The novel and fiery thesis of Break It Up is simple: the United States has never lived up to its name - and never will. The disunionist impulse may have found its greatest expression in the Civil War, but as Break It Up shows, the seduction of secession wasn't limited to the South or the 19th century. With a scholar's command and a journalist's curiosity, Kreitner takes readers on a revolutionary journey through American history, revealing the power and persistence of disunion movements in every era and region.
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Completely Partisan
- By Patrick Tobin on 11-06-22
By: Richard Kreitner
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The Three Lives of James Madison
- Genius, Partisan, President
- By: Noah Feldman
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 34 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician, he cofounded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk conflict, becoming the first wartime president and, despite the odds, winning.
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Cogently organized, meticulously balanced
- By Diana Black Kennedy on 06-15-18
By: Noah Feldman
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American Sphinx
- The Character of Thomas Jefferson
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Susan O'Malley
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight. Historian Joseph J. Ellis sifts the facts shrewdly from the legends and the rumors, treading a path between vilification and hero worship in order to formulate a plausible portrait of the man who still today "hover[s] over the political scene like one of those dirigibles cruising above a crowded football stadium, flashing words of inspiration to both teams".
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So: they did the DNA and … time to change appendix
- By Jamanosa on 11-03-21
By: Joseph J. Ellis
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James Madison and the Making of America
- By: Kevin R. C. Gutzman
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In James Madison and the Making of America, historian Kevin Gutzman looks beyond the way James Madison is traditionally seen - as "The Father of the Constitution” - to find a more complex and sometimes contradictory portrait of this influential Founding Father and the ways in which he influenced the spirit of today's United States.
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Not a traditional biography
- By David on 12-14-12
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The Quartet
- Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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From Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian Joseph J. Ellis, the unexpected story of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew.
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bias is not good history
- By Craig on 01-24-18
By: Joseph J. Ellis
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The Idea of America
- Reflections on the Birth of the United States
- By: Gordon S Wood
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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The preeminent historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history
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Sophisticated analyses
- By Roger on 01-25-12
By: Gordon S Wood
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Lincoln's Mentors
- The Education of a Leader
- By: Michael J. Gerhardt
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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A novel and brilliant look at how Abraham Lincoln mastered the art of leadership: acclaimed historian Michael J. Gerhardt, who appeared during the impeachment proceedings of President Trump, reveals how a group of five men mentored an obscure lawyer with no executive experience to become American’s greatest leader
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Interesting book
- By Brian on 03-07-21
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Simply no book quite like this
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We the Fallen People presents a close look at the ideas of human nature to be found in the history of American democratic thought. McKenzie, following C. S. Lewis, claims there are only two reasons to believe in majority rule: because we have confidence in human nature - or because we don't. The Founders subscribed to the biblical principle that humans are fallen and their virtue is always doubtful, and they wrote the US Constitution to frame a republic intended to handle our weaknesses.
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Thoughtful reflection and historical perspective, but ultimately no easy answer
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What listeners say about Fears of a Setting Sun
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-17-21
Fun Read
Great look at how politics have been politics forever and also how adversaries come together and sacrifice around a common cause only to find regret when their heads clear.
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- Kyle Eschenroeder
- 12-30-22
Fun and surprisingly inspiring book about the founding fathers and their changing views.
The founding fathers disagreed on a lot, had different ideals and expectations of the American citizen, mostly expected the Constitution to not survive very long, … and we’re otherwise imperfect humans. Works a bit like Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals, but without so much of the scandal. Invigorating read for an American concerned with the current political and cultural situation.
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- Mike Sinks
- 12-14-21
Quick Read to Round Out Knowledge of the Founders
This is a worthy listen that will fill in some gaps in understanding. It was popular in the past to deify the American founding generation. In the more recent past, it became popular to tear down this facade of infallibility. This book sits in the middle. It reveals that these men had similar fears - fears that echo today when one watches the news. A few key takeaways:
1) Even the Founders became grumpy old men by the end.
2) Partisanship is as old as the Republic itself and has virtually always been an enemy of good sense.
3) The Constitution remains a living document. The epilogue says it very well. The founding generation did not think themselves more enlightened than those who would follow.
A worthy listen/read.
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- kpa
- 03-04-24
A different perspective on the founders
This fresh perspective, focusing on the founder's doubts and fears, is not so much new information as a different emphasis, but it's a salutary re-reading of familiar material that provides a thought-provoking perspective for the political crisis we're currently experiencing.
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- Nelson
- 06-12-23
Hopeful
This was not the simplest listen, but at the conclusion it is highly important and left me hopeful that the current state of our country is hopeful. Also that there has always been work to do as there is now to ensure it continues.
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- Gabriel
- 08-06-21
Relevant for our time
This book claims, or at least is claimed by many reviewers, to describe disillusionment of the founders with the Constitution and the government that it created. There is a little of that here, but in truth most of the so-called disillusionment was factional fighting between the Federalists and Republicans over the scope, tenor and nature of the new Federal government. But in that light, it's a very helpful review of the partisan argument that has dogged American politics since the founding.
There isn't much new here, other than emphasis on disagreement, rather than on agreement or accomplishment. But it's a great listen and good refresher on the founders' struggle to find common ideology and goals to animate their new creation. Highly recommended.
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- Damon
- 11-15-21
Renewed my faith in the American experiment
The book goes in depth explaining the strong sentiments of the founding fathers and their fears for the future. The book provides historical references which are an excellent refresher on the big challenges of their day. Here we are still resolving those conflicts, weaving a course through the tapestry of history. The past can teach us something about the present.
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- Brandon Gresham
- 07-06-22
if you are anxious about our current political...
if you are anxious about our current political climate, read this for a bit of consolation. you will also be armed to combat the arguments posed from political extremists of every stripe: even our Founders couldn't agree, but they nevertheless worked on finding areas of compromise, in the interest of patriotism, love of country, and hope.
if our Founders couldn't agree but nevertheless worked toward compromise, who are any of us to think we are somehow better or wiser to demand a position of non compromise?
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