| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding. By Darren Staloff. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005. viii, 419 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0-8090-7784-1.)

One might wonder if there is a place for yet another book on the American Enlightenment, but Darren Staloff makes a persuasive case that there is. In an extended introduction, Staloff offers a broad, thematic rendering of the background, features, forms, and politics of the Enlightenment. The book's three extended chapters then examine how the features and forms of the Enlightenment played out very differently in the lives of three titans of the American Revolution: Alexander Hamilton (the Enlightenment "fulfilled"), John Adams (the Enlightenment "transcended"), and Thomas Jefferson ("romantic America"—the Enlightenment left behind?). Each chapter is similarly structured. Each argues that deep involvement in the Revolution required the Founder at issue to reexamine his Enlightenment inheritance (a process titled "The Turning")—a process out of which emerged a distinctive "vision." Each chapter then examines the ways those visions informed the Founder's behavior in the heated context of postrevolutionary politics. Each concludes with brief reflections on the Founder's legacy for modern America.

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