First Principles, Thomas E. Ricks

 

First Principles: What America's founders learned from the Greeks and Romans and how that shaped our country by Thomas E. Ricks sucked me in with just the title.

Started: 6/1/2021
Completed: 6/4/2021
Recommendation: Highly Recommended
Recommended By: Nobody

Review:

Written in response to the Trump presidency with hope for the future, this book does a good job at describing how classical concepts were leveraged to create our government.  While I do have the author's disgust for Adams (though I understand it), that sole point excepted, I found this book helpful and revealing.  I had always thought of Washington as Cincinnatus, but he held other aliases as well and this book does an excellent job explaining the whys and wherefores.  Maybe I should have read this book during Trump's reign, perhaps it would have eased some of my concerns.  With norms falling all around, however, it seems much more likely that this book would have been drowned out by the cascading foundations of our government hitting the pavement around me.