#1308 American Dialogue with Joseph Ellis

Listening to America

Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 October 2018

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Indeed, if I read the founders right, their greatest legacy is the recognition that argument itself is the answer."

— Joseph J. Ellis

We welcome back Professor Joseph Ellis — the eminent historian, author and friend of the Jefferson Hour — to speak about his new book, American Dialogue: The Founders and Us, which is out now.

No historian of the early national period of American life has done more than Joseph Ellis to give us a sense of what it was like then: what were the challenges, what were the opportunities, the different types of personalities that went into the mix. It was not a monolith. Ellis is maybe the most spirited prose stylist of all of the historians of that period, and he's interested in four of our national figures from that era, particularly Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and the first president of the United States, George Washington. Ellis uses the founders as a springboard to wrestle with eternal problems of American life.

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Thomas Jefferson is interpreted by Clay S. Jenkinson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Good Day Thomas Jefferson Hour podcast listeners and welcome to this week's show.
0:05.0	We're pretty excited about it.
0:07.0	Because we have one of my oldest friends and now your dear friend Dr. Joseph Ellis,
0:12.0	formerly of Mount Holyoke, one of the supreme historians of the
0:15.8	early national period in American life.
0:18.2	You know, I talked to him early a couple days ago before this show.
0:21.4	You know what he told me?
0:22.4	No. I talked to him about
0:24.0	about Adams and you occasionally accusing me of being an atom site which I think
0:31.5	he even wondered if that word existed as a descriptor
0:36.3	and told him about Krizzler's portrait and he said, David, you should wear that like a
0:41.2	badge of honor.
0:42.4	He's become an Adam'site, Joseph Ellis. you should wear that like a badge of honor.
0:42.6	He's become an Adam's like Joseph Ellis.
0:45.0	He always has been in the certain sense.
0:46.3	No, he's an eminent historian.
0:47.9	But look, he's so interesting.
0:51.9	He's backed by popular demand. We get a ton of mail when he's on and people say we like that scholar. Plus he's got a new book. He's got a new book and he wrote this book because it's kind of a summing up in a certain way.
1:03.0	He's toward the end of a very, very distinguished career.
1:07.0	He probably has some more books in him.
1:09.0	Oh, sure.
1:10.0	But he also, you can hear it in his voice, is deeply, deeply troubled by what's happening to this country.
	...

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