THE IDEA OF AMERICA

“The Arguments of America” might have been a better title because this is the story of conflicting interest groups and warring philosophies. Jefferson had one idea of America, Madison another. Nor is this book a single text. It consists instead of 11 essays, written over decades. Wood’s fascination with the power and origin of ideas is contagious, but the Pulitzer-winning historian is always looking down from 30,000 feet. Abstractions can be narrated with force, and Robert Fass does his job, but then abstractions are, after all, just that—amusing but rarely intimate. If the listener takes nothing else away, at least the vision of the Founding Fathers as a gathering of companionable saints in periwigs must die a terrible death. B.H.C. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2011]