Joseph J. Ellis biography

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Joseph J. Ellis

Joseph J. Ellis

Joseph J. Ellis Biography

Joseph J. Ellis is one of the nation's leading scholars of American history. The author of nine books, Ellis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Founding Brothers: the Revolutionary Generation and won the National Book Award for American Sphinx, a biography of Thomas Jefferson. His in-depth chronicle of the life of our first President, His Excellency: George Washington, was a New York Times bestseller.

Ellis' newest book, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789, was released in Spring 2015.

Ellis has taught in the Leadership Studies program at Williams College. He previously taught at the Honors College at the University of Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke College, and the United States Military Academy at West Point. He lives in Amherst, MA with his wife, Ellen Wilkins Ellis and three dogs. He is the father of three sons.

Joseph J. Ellis's website

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Interview

Joseph Ellis shares what inspired him to follow his award winning biography of Thomas Jefferson with Founding Brothers and what kind of research went into this Book.

What made you decide to follow your award winning biography of Thomas Jefferson with Founding Brothers and what kind of research went into this book?
After I finished my last two books, on John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, I realized that I had read much of the correspondence produced by the founding generation. I did have to go through the Washington letters, and read the Burr correspondence, but otherwise I had pretty much started a new book on the entire group of founders without quite knowing what I was doing. And throughout those letters, they kept referring to each other as a "band of brothers." We think of them as Founding Fathers, but they saw themselves as a fraternity. I should add that my title fails to include the one sister in the group, Abigail Adams, whom I think was an equal partner in her husband's political career.

You open the book with the sentence, "No event in American history which was so improbable at the time has seemed so inevitable in retrospect as the American Revolution." How so?
We regard the success of the American Revolution as inevitable because we have lived so long as a nation, over two hundred years, with the consequences of its success. Looking back over that stretch of ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Joseph J. Ellis at BookBrowse
Revolutionary Summer jacket Founding Brothers jacket
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Readalikes

All the books below are recommended as readalikes for Joseph J. Ellis but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose readalikes

  • Robert A. Caro

    Robert A. Caro

    For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, has three times won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year and Best ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Founding Brothers

    Try:
    Master of the Senate
    by Robert A. Caro

  • Woody Holton

    Woody Holton

    Woody Holton is McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches and researches Early American history, especially the American Revolution, with a focus on economic history and on African ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Founding Brothers

    Try:
    Abigail Adams
    by Woody Holton

We recommend 8 similar authors

View all 8 Readalikes

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