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.
An entrepreneur, a writer who wanted to depict an ideal society, a dramatist who tried to reconcile high aesthetic standards and populism, and a Connecticut Yankee who ran into the contradictions of conservatism and liberalism—each of the four men depicted in this book had a vision of what kind of society post-Revolutionary America should be. Through portraits of these bellwether figures, the prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis examines the currents that were shaping the new country.