From Publishers Weekly
While the five essays in this slim volume neither pack the stylistic wallop nor make the powerful contributions to knowledge of so many of the author's previous works, they are vintage Bailyn. The two-time Pulitzer-winning historian's focus is the creative imagination applied to statecraft. His subjects are the nation's founders, whom he believes to be idealists as much as realists. As usual, Bailyn's ebullient if nuanced admiration for the Framers carries the reader along. Characteristically, he emphasizes how the Framers' provincialism allowed them to spring free of European modes of thought to create something genuinely new. Bailyn (Voyagers to the West, etc.) brilliantly uses pictures to reveal the different aspirations and bearing of the British and founding gentry. A superb chapter also uses iconography to demonstrate how Benjamin Franklin took an active hand in fashioning and altering his own likeness in paintings and medals and then used them to create crucial sympathy in France for the American cause. Of all the "tempered idealists" he deals with, none tangles Bailyn up, as he does just about everyone else, like Thomas Jefferson. But essays on the Federalist Papers and the complex, paradoxical, ever-changing reception of American constitutionalism abroad rescue the work from momentary confusion. One comes away with a rounded appreciation of the founders' limitations, failures and moral failings as well as their extraordinary achievements. 65 b&w, 4 pages color illus.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
A Pulitzer Prize winner twice over, historian Bailyn offers character sketches of the Founding Fathers. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Eminent historian Bailyn analyzes different aspects of the American Revolution in these essays, which are thematically framed as explorations of the contradictions between the actions and the words of some of the Founding Fathers. Jefferson's reputation has, of course, wildly gyrated, and it is currently at a nadir. Bailyn doesn't restore the sage, zinging him for slaveholding, but he writes with nuance about Jefferson's radical ideals about human liberty, which, if not honored personally, have nevertheless proven lasting in the abstract. Another ambiguity Bailyn focuses on is foreign policy, specifically, how the Founders detested power politics but found it necessary to play the game in the alliance with France. Franklin's diplomacy in Paris provides the author's focus for this conflict between realism and idealism, with interesting digressions into the imagery of Franklin. Although the book is slightly academic, the dozens of illustrations and Bailyn's reputation as a Pulitzer winner (Voyagers to the West, 1987) will draw history readers. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“A group of unimpeachable assessments . . . A gem of a book, rich in understanding . . . A thoroughly urbane account of the provincial wellsprings of our nation’s life.” —The New York Times

“Seldom have . . . the American Founders . . . been celebrated with such depth and sophistication.” —The New York Review of Books

“In the great flood of books about the American Revolution . . . To Begin the World Anew occupies a place all its own. A closely argued exploration.” —The Washington Post Book World

“One of America’s most discerning historians. His thinking is subtle. His style is forceful. . . . Throughout he retains a sense of wonder that those men in a clump of distant British provinces could have wrought a political system, a view of the world, that is so imaginative and enduring.” —Los Angeles Times

“Deep, creative, brilliant, and provocative. In a word: dazzling.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette



Review
?A group of unimpeachable assessments . . . A gem of a book, rich in understanding . . . A thoroughly urbane account of the provincial wellsprings of our nation?s life.? ?The New York Times

?Seldom have . . . the American Founders . . . been celebrated with such depth and sophistication.? ?The New York Review of Books

?In the great flood of books about the American Revolution . . . To Begin the World Anew occupies a place all its own. A closely argued exploration.? ?The Washington Post Book World

?One of America?s most discerning historians. His thinking is subtle. His style is forceful. . . . Throughout he retains a sense of wonder that those men in a clump of distant British provinces could have wrought a political system, a view of the world, that is so imaginative and enduring.? ?Los Angeles Times

?Deep, creative, brilliant, and provocative. In a word: dazzling.? ?Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

FROM OUR EDITORS

These intellectually stimulating and balanced essays about America's Founding Fathers will reinforce the already sterling reputation of two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bernard Bailyn. The Massachusetts-based historian uses the contradictions, inconsistencies, and ambivalence of these revolutionary thinkers to illuminate the problems and possibilities of the young Republic. Bailyn paints American history on a grand scale, offering insights into dialectical tensions that remain with us even today.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"With these character sketches of key figures of the American Revolution and illuminating probes of its circumstances, Bernard Bailyn reveals the ambiguities, complexities, and uncertainties of the founding generation as well as their achievements." "Using visual documentation - portraits, architecture, allegorical engravings - as well as written sources, Bailyn, one of our most esteemed historians, paints a complex picture of that distant but still remarkably relevant world. He explores the powerfully creative effects of the Founders' provincialism and lays out in fine detail the mingling of gleaming utopianism and tough political pragmatism in Thomas Jefferson's public career, and the effect that ambiguity had on his politics, political thought, and present reputation. And Benjamin Franklin emerges as a figure as cunning in his management of foreign affairs and of his visual image as he was amiable, relaxed, and amusing in his social life." Bailyn shows, too, why it is that the Federalist papers - polemical documents thrown together frantically, helter-skelter, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in a fierce political battle two hundred years ago - have attained canonical status, not only as a penetrating analysis of the American Constitution but as a timeless commentary on the nature of politics and constitutionalism.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

While the five essays in this slim volume neither pack the stylistic wallop nor make the powerful contributions to knowledge of so many of the author's previous works, they are vintage Bailyn. The two-time Pulitzer-winning historian's focus is the creative imagination applied to statecraft. His subjects are the nation's founders, whom he believes to be idealists as much as realists. As usual, Bailyn's ebullient if nuanced admiration for the Framers carries the reader along. Characteristically, he emphasizes how the Framers' provincialism allowed them to spring free of European modes of thought to create something genuinely new. Bailyn (Voyagers to the West, etc.) brilliantly uses pictures to reveal the different aspirations and bearing of the British and founding gentry. A superb chapter also uses iconography to demonstrate how Benjamin Franklin took an active hand in fashioning and altering his own likeness in paintings and medals and then used them to create crucial sympathy in France for the American cause. Of all the "tempered idealists" he deals with, none tangles Bailyn up, as he does just about everyone else, like Thomas Jefferson. But essays on the Federalist Papers and the complex, paradoxical, ever-changing reception of American constitutionalism abroad rescue the work from momentary confusion. One comes away with a rounded appreciation of the founders' limitations, failures and moral failings as well as their extraordinary achievements. 65 b&w, 4 pages color illus. (Jan. 15) Forecast: Can Bailyn sell as well as Joseph Ellis on the founders? Perhaps two Pulitzers, a colorful, inviting cover and a text filled with visuals will help him break out saleswise. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

KLIATT - Pat Moore

Noted Harvard historian Bailyn looks carefully at the era of the founders in general and at Jefferson and Franklin in particular in these essays on the originality of the 18th-century American political thinkers. His prose is liquid, highly accessible, and exceptionally informative on the mindsets and the personalities of the period. In his essay on Jefferson, he studies the contradictions and ambiguities of this complex man. In the essay on Franklin, he draws a charming word portrait of the American envoy in Paris, using the paintings, drawings and memorabilia that the French created to immortalize him. Most useful, perhaps, is Bailyn's essay on the Federalist papers, their authors and their format. Valuable reading for AP history students and all history teachers. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Random House, Vintage, 192p. illus. bibliog., Ages 15 to adult.

Foreign Affairs

This slender volume contains more startling revelations and useful insights than many longer works. Although all of Bailyn's essays are noteworthy, the two on politics and the creative imagination and realism and idealism in American diplomacy are truly indispensable: a synthesis of art history and political history resting on monumental and exhaustive scholarship. By comparing portraits of American and British gentry in the late colonial era, "Politics and the Creative Imagination" shows how the American "provincial" identity encouraged the revolutionary generation to conceive radical solutions to contemporary political problems. Bailyn draws illuminating and convincing parallels between these acts of political imagination and moments in art history when "provincials" have reinterpreted and renewed metropolitan aesthetic values. In "Realism and Idealism in American Diplomacy," meanwhile, Bailyn brilliantly uses the example of Benjamin Franklin to show how the latter's conception of himself changed as his experience broadened — and how images of Franklin (on coffee cups, medallions, portraits, etc.) permeated eighteenth-century Europe. Had there been T-shirts at the time, Franklin's image would have adorned them. And on Bailyn's evidence, there is no doubt that Franklin would have carefully selected the images as part of his program of public diplomacy.

Library Journal

A Pulitzer Prize winner twice over, historian Bailyn offers character sketches of the Founding Fathers. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews