Review: What Can We Learn from the Founding Fathers? (Washington Post)

How, in the Year of Our Crisis 2024, do we feel about the Founding Fathers?

For many Americans, they are inspirational figures deserving of uncomplicated reverence — the creators of modern liberal democracy. For others, they’re the monsters who prolonged slavery in the United States, the chauvinists who excluded women from the franchise and the morons whose rules would grant as many senators to Wyoming as California, despite its having one-sixty-eighth of the population.

Two humorous new books probe these conflicting attitudes while warning of the perils of simplistic, binary thinking. What do their authors think we might still learn from the founders — and from the Constitution those men entrusted so hopefully to posterity?

Books reviewed:

• The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning by A.J. Jacobs

• Ben & Me: In Search of a Founder's Formula for a Long and Useful Life by Eric Weiner

For the reviews in full, visit The Washington Post.