One of the nation’s leading experts on the founding fathers, Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor at National Review and a columnist for The New York Observer. He is also a frequent contributor to American Heritage and the New York Times Book Review. His books include, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, Rules of Civility, Alexander Hamilton: American, America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918, and Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution. His documentary, Rediscovering George Washington, aired on PBS on July 4, 2002.
Richard Brookhiser has won a wide and loyal following for his stylish, pointed, and elegant biographies. In 1996, his groundbreaking “moral biography”, Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington, helped spark both a national revival of interest in the founding period, and a revolution in the art of biography. Focusing on the essential points Brookhiser showed what was great about George Washington, and why he still matters today—and did it in 200 pages, not 800.
Since then, he has done the same in his highly acclaimed biographies of Alexander Hamilton, four generation of the Adams family (John, John Quincy, Charles Francis and Henry), and Geouverneur Morris.
A captivating professional speaker, Brookhiser does not hide his subjects' flaws--Hamilton's womanizing, John Adams's uncontrollable temper--or ignore our national failings (slavery is a problem running through each of his books). But he believes that great men change history, good men change it for the better, and that America was lucky to have such men at its birth.
• Outside Story (1986)
• Founding Father (1996)
• Alexander Hamilton: American (1999)
• George Washington: A National Treasure (2002)
• Rules of Civility: The 110 Principles That Guided Our First
President in War and Peace (2003)
• Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who
Wrote the Constitution (2003)
• What Would the Founders Do?: Our Questions, Their Answers
