"Revolutionaries"

In this remarkable book, historian Jack Rakove shows the reader how the men who invented America went from private individuals pursuing their own lives to revolutionaries.  None of them set out become revolutionary but events thrust them from protest to war rather rapidly.  Rakove shows how they were transformed -- how Washington became a strategist, Franklin a diplomat, Madison a constitutional thinker and Hamilton a policymaker.  These were ordinary men who became extraordinary.  This is one of those rare books that puts a fresh look on how the country came to be and why the idea of America endures.

Hardbound.  496 pages.