Keepers...

Some books are borrowers and some are keepers. By that I mean, some books are meant to be checked out at the library and returned and some books are meant to be purchased for your home library, kept and treasured. This is a treasured book. Beautifully written, and very straightforward, Benson Bobrick allows the Founding Parents to speak in their own words instead of making thoughts and assumptions for them as is so popular with many historians. When you finish this book, you will know the founders better, you will understand their values and you will see the seeds of a new kind of thought begin to take root and grow into the concept of self-government.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to share just a few of my favorite American histories with you. I believe that we ought to know the history of our country and even (this is where I'm pathetic) the history of our world. We can't possibly know enough about our past. I think that more than any other learning, learning about our past as a nation and as a human race, can help us avoid terrible mistakes in the future. I love this quote by Edward Gibbon, an Englishman and historian who wrote one of the world's very important books, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past."