THE INTIMATE LIVES OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS

Thomas Fleming examines the lives of six of the Founding Fathers of the United States: George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. The author combines private and public details of the great men. He makes them seem more mortal than in conventional accounts by focusing on their dalliances with the opposite sex, especially when not the spouse. Narrator Arthur Morey can do little to enliven quotes greater than 200 years old and expressed in the dated vocabulary of revolutionary times. Morey’s voice, soft and taciturn, fits with the writer’s didactic attention to detail, but the production is dry. Morey’s slow pace and precise diction complement a disquisition intended to inform rather than entertain. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2010]