Ellis says he got the idea for his book from Lytton Strachy's Emminent Victorians. Not having read Strachy's work, I can't comment on any similarities other than those Ellis himself points out:
Eminent Victorians made Strachy famous for the sophistication of his prejudices --- his title was deeply ironic --- but I want to thank him for giving me the courage of mine.
In other words, if Eminent Victorians is characterized by sophisticated prejudices, the same can be said of Founding Brothers. I will be on the lookout for Ellis's "prejudices," and I can only hope I will be up for their "sophistication."It also makes me ponder his title, the replacing of the traditional "Founding Fathers" with the term "Founding Brothers." Isn't it a clue to how Ellis will approach the traditionally stolid "fathers" of the United States, seeing them less from the perspective of history and more in the immediate context of their contemporaries?
Ellis also acknowledges a number of "colleagues" who saved him "from countless blunders." In the list I noticed the name Gordon Wood as a "brother" historian. I recently finished Wood's lengthy Empire of Liberty, and it inspired me to go on to Ellis's book, which covers a lot of the same ground only on a much smaller scale.
As I read Ellis, I may occassionally glance back at what Wood says. Even though Wood's book was published after Ellis's, Empire of Liberty is my personal Ur-text for the early history of the "republic" that came to be known as the United States.
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