“Passionate Sage is [Ellis’s] best book.”―Judith Shulevitz, The New York Times Book Review A fresh look at this astute, likably quirky statesman, by the author of the Pulitzer Award-winning Founding Brothers and the National Book Award winning American Sphinx. "The most lovable and most laughable, the warmest and possibly the wisest of the founding fathers, John Adams knew himself as few men do and preserved his knowledge in a voluminous correspondence that still resonates. Ellis has used it with great skill and perception not only to bring us the man, warts and all, but more importantly to reveal his extraordinary insights into the problems confronting the founders that resonate today in the republic they created."―Edmund S. Morgan, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University.

Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams

Biographies & Memoirs

Ellis Ph.D., Joseph J.

Historical

W.W.Norton&Company

"Impassioned and erudite.…A captivating portrait of this Massachusetts native as a wonderfully contrary genius possessed of an uncommon moral intelligence and farsighted political wisdom." ―Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
A fresh look at this astute, likably quirky statesman, by the author of the Pulitzer Award-winning Founding Brothers and the National Book Award winning American Sphinx.
"The most lovable and most laughable, the warmest and possibly the wisest of the founding fathers, John Adams knew himself as few men do and preserved his knowledge in a voluminous correspondence that still vibrates. Ellis has used it with great skill and perception not only to bring us the man, warts and all, but more importantly to reveal his extraordinary insights into the problems confronting the founders that resonate today in the republic they created." ―Edmund S. Morgan, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University

Through portraits of four figures―Charles Willson Peale, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, William Dunlap, and Noah Webster―Joseph Ellis provides a unique perspective on the role of culture in post-Revolutionary America, both its high expectations and its frustrations. Each life is fascinating in its own right, and each is used to brightly illuminate the historical context.

After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture

Through portraits of four figures―Charles Willson Peale, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, William Dunlap, and Noah Webster―Joseph Ellis provides a unique perspective on the role of culture in post-Revolutionary America, both its high expectations and its frustrations.

Review\n"Ellis’s palpable affection lends a pleasing glow to his profile of Adams, which is why Passionate Sage is his best book." 
― Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review\n"The best portrait of a Revolutionary-era statesman." 
― Evan Thomas, Wall Street Journal\nAn absorbing, insightful profile of the revolutionary leader, president, husband, and father from one of our best historians, now in a beautiful new package. 
John Adams was unique among the nation’s founders in leaving a record of his most intimate thoughts and feelings. Instinctively candid and politically incisive, Adams offers the clearest view of the ambitions and principles that drove the revolutionary generation. Passionate Sage offers a brilliant introduction to the second president: his politics, his affinities for family and friendship even with political opponents like Jefferson, and his enduring significance. “Ellis’s palpable affection lends a pleasing glow to his profile of Adams, which is why Passionate Sage is his best book.”―Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review 
“Impassioned and erudite. . . . A captivating portrait of this Massachusetts native as a wonderfully contrary genius possessed of an uncommon moral intelligence and farsighted political wisdom.”―Michiko Kakutani, New York Times 
“The best portrait of a Revolutionary-era statesman.”―Evan Thomas, Wall Street Journal

The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783

New York Times Book Review ― Editors’ Choice • Chicago Tribune ― "60 Best Reads for Right Now" • St. Louis Post-Dispatch ― "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" 
Challenging conventional wisdom, The Cause offers a “necessary” (John S. Gardner, Guardian) account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America’s revolutionary era. 
For Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph J. Ellis, The Cause marks the culmination of a lifetime of engagement with the founding era, completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers. Here Ellis, countering popular histories that romanticize the “Spirit of ’76,” demonstrates through “evocative profiles of British loyalists, slaves, Native Americans and soldiers uncertain of what was being founded” (Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune) that the rebels fought not for a nation but under the mantle of “The Cause,” a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle all but destined to give rise to the warring factions of later American history. Combining action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with characteristically trenchant insight, The Cause “deftly foreshadows all the issues that would complicate America’s trajectory” (Richard Stengel, New York Times Book Review), forcing us to finally reconsider the story we have long told ourselves about our origins―as a people, and as a nation. 
“At the intersection of his expertise and our need for coherence about our national founding arrives historian Joseph J. Ellis. . . . Ellis is no apologist, but he is a chronicler of the entire revolution, its best aspirations, its worst contradictions, and its ongoing dilemmas.” ―Hugh Hewitt, Washington Post 6 black-and-white images and 7 maps

History

Americas

Liveright

Chicago Tribune -- "60 Best Reads for Right Now" * St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- "50 Fall Books You Should Consider Reading" A culminating work on the American Founding by one of its leading historians, The Cause rethinks the American Revolution as we have known it. In one of the most "exciting and engaging" (Gordon S. Wood) histories of the American founding in decades, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis offers an epic account of the origins and clashing ideologies of America's revolutionary era, recovering a war more brutal, and more disorienting, than any in our history, save perhaps the Civil War. For more than two centuries, historians have debated the history of the American Revolution, disputing its roots, its provenance, and above all, its meaning. These questions have intrigued Ellis--one of our most celebrated scholars of American history--throughout his entire career. With this much-anticipated volume, he at last brings the story of the revolution to vivid life, with "surprising relevance" (Susan Dunn) for our modern era. Completing a trilogy of books that began with Founding Brothers, The Cause returns us to the very heart of the American founding, telling the military and political story of the war for independence from the ground up, and from all sides: British and American, loyalist and patriot, white and Black. Taking us from the end of the Seven Years' War to 1783, and drawing on a wealth of previously untapped sources, The Cause interweaves action-packed tales of North American military campaigns with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a thrilling narrative that brings together a cast of familiar and long-forgotten characters. Here Ellis recovers the stories of Catherine Littlefield Greene, wife of Major General Nathanael Greene, the sister among the "band of brothers"; Thayendanegea, a Mohawk chief known to the colonists as Joseph Brant, who led the Iroquois Confederation against the Patriots; and Harry Washington, the enslaved namesake of George Washington, who escaped Mount Vernon to join the British Army and fight against his former master. Countering popular histories that romanticize the "Spirit of '76," Ellis demonstrates that the rebels fought under the mantle of "The Cause," a mutable, conveniently ambiguous principle that afforded an umbrella under which different, and often conflicting, convictions and goals could coexist. Neither an American nation nor a viable government existed at the end of the war. In fact, one revolutionary legacy regarded the creation of such a nation, or any robust expression of government power, as the ultimate betrayal of The Cause. This legacy alone rendered any effective response to the twin tragedies of the founding--slavery and the Native American dilemma--problematic at best. Written with the vivid and muscular prose for which Ellis is known, and with characteristically trenchant insight, The Cause marks the culmination of a lifetime of engagement with the founding era. A landmark work of narrative history, it challenges the story we have long told ourselves about our origins as a people, and as a nation.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ellis Ph.D., Joseph J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ellis Ph.D., Joseph J.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ellis Ph.D., Joseph J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams

Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams

After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture

After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture

Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams

The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783

The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783