First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country (Thomas E. Ricks, Harper 2020)

In the political turmoil that characterizes 2020, Thomas E. Ricks writes an eminently readable and intellectually stimulating investigation into the personal formation of USA Founding Fathers Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison. His work gives us the opportunity to consider what made America great in the first place.

If exploring history is one of your passions, you have slogged your way through minutiae-laden tomes which dryly recount mind-numbing details: obscure names jumbled together with little contextual framing, disparate dates with seeming lack of connection to a larger whole, geographic descriptions which overwhelm any semblance of narrative flow.

Reading history, fortunately, does not always need to be such an arid experience. Ricks, the military history columnist for the New York Times Book Review, does his profession (and his reader) a great service by creating a flowing narrative with sufficient detail to make his point: USA Founding Fathers did not simply arise ex nihilo in the American Revolution. In fact, each of them were significantly influenced by ancient Greek and Roman political philosophers. 

Ricks masterfully details the ways in which their early life and academic experiences formed the first four Presidents: Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison. With adroit clarity Ricks fashions a narrative to reveal how, in the midst of their individual and significant differences, these four men laid the foundations for a shared national identity. This shared vision did not center on grasping and maintaining political power (Washington wisely chose to relinquish power at the end of his term, trusting the American people and the process). This grounded vision was not based on the geographical power wrested from electoral votes (Adams is the single executive in the era not from Virginia). Further, the "greatness" of America was not subsumed into political party identification (Washington, a Federalist, and Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican, were far apart politically, but did not cast aspersions toward one another. Adams may be an exception at this point, however).

The key to the "greatness" of America's first four presidents, argues Ricks, is their rootedness in the wisdom of the ancient Greeks and Romans. While each president's influences are unique to himself, their common strength is found in sources beyond themselves (and prior to their immediate context). In other words, they held a shared value in classical, ancient wisdom. "Virtue" as classically described was the key to their individual understandings of "success."

Ricks brings the reader from pre-Revolution America through the era of Manifest Destiny. His narrative is engaging, peppered with humorous scintillas and structured to move the reader across the first century of American history with appropriate speed. (Those desiring more detail can reference his extensive annotated endnotes).

While the first thirteen chapters are well done, perhaps the best reading moments are to be found in chapter fourteen, in which Ricks diagnoses "The End of American Classicism," and in his Epilogue, in which he identifies ten steps forward for Americans. (Spoiler alert: be prepared for an optimistic conclusion!)

If you find yourself disillusioned with the current state of USA political life, you need to read this book! Ricks' solid research, irenic tone and non-anxious conclusions belong in the center of American consciousness ... once again.