What readers think of Founding Brothers, plus links to write your own review.

I'm in the same class that megan down below is....and I'm gonna have to say that's a definite 10-4 on the "boring" evaluation. Honestly, I wasted two perfectly good days of my life reading it, and, in hindsight, I have to say it wasn't worth it, because I honestly don't think I learned anything incredibly usefull. Overall, I feel un-enriched. Buh-Gah.

I was FORCED to read this book in my Advanced Placement US History course and it was largely a waste of my time-you could have easily gotten the same amount of information in an easy to understand, shortened simplified version somewhere else. Anyone who reads this book on their own time for pleasure is CRAZY. It is the most un-entertaining book I have ever read in my life. The author's writing style is something like this: "he picked up the pen. He then set the pen down on the desk. After looking around, he picked up the pen a second time, after dropping it he lavishly bowed to pick it up again." There is nothing remotely entertaining about this book. All I can say is, my respect for the Pulitzer Prize just went waaaaay down, in the future if I see that stamp on a book I'll run the other direction...if this is what good is to them...

neverread the book

This book was the most boring thing besides American Polity that I have had the displeasure of being forced to waste my time reading. It is not a novel or anything, the author doesn't even seem to know. And it won the pulitzer prize how?.....

Founding Brothers was a deplorable read, done only because I had to for a class. First of all -- what is it? A text book or a novel -- the author couldn't really decide. Secondly, Ellis spends more time trying to impress us with esoteric and large words [that oftentimes can be replaced with an equally meaningful, more succinct, and more readily understood short word] and sentence structure, that the book becomes a pedantic affair, losing any of its original power [whew..run-on sentence]. The content itself is boring, and although it replaced reading our text book in my history class, it didn't make the class any better. To the person who is terribly interested in the Revolutionary Generation, by all means, read brothers. For everyone else, spare yourself the time and money.

The general case supporting brothers is the way the founding fathers are given personalities. I think that this takes up space, and adds little to the experience. The characters behave exactly as you would think -- with the possible exception being Adams who is glorified as the book's "protagonist".

In summation, brothers is a rather odd thing, and I question the Pulitzer board's sanity...

A great book if you are looking for something to help you go to sleep.

I personally found the book hard to put down. The author beautifully crafts this intriguing study of the revolutionary generation. It is very deep and complex in nature, which may prove difficult to understand to those who are not strong readers or lack a strong comprehension of the english language. The author challanges the reader by using complex sentence structure, profound and intricate thought lines. as well as anequally complex vocabulary in the tradition of classic american literature. If a reader were to find this book didfficult to follow or boring then the failure is most probably the readers, not the authors. Bravo! Mr. Ellis.

The book was very interesting in the first pages of each chapter, but then the diction and the syntax that was chosen by the author made it very confusing for the reader. The structure of the book is excellent, but there is no purpose for the reader to try to understand the structure if he or she can not understand the book.