American Connections: The Founding Fathers. Networked.
By James Burke
3.5/5
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About this ebook
If you enjoyed Martin Sheen as the president on television's The West Wing, then you're connected to founder Josiah Bartlett. The connection from signer Bartlett to Sheen includes John Paul Jones; Judge William Cooper, father of James Fenimore; Sir Thomas Brisbane, governor of New South Wales; an incestuous astronomer; an itinerant math teacher; early inventors of television; and pioneering TV personality Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, the inspiration for Ramon Estevez's screen name, Martin Sheen.
James Burke
James Burke is the author of several bestselling books, including Circles, American Connections, and The Knowledge Web. He is a monthly columnist at Scientific American and also serves as director, writer, and host of the television series Connections 3 on The Learning Channel. He is the founder of the James Burke Institute for Innovation in Education, whose flagship project, the Knowledge Web, an interactive website, was recently launched. He lives in London.
Read more from James Burke
Connections Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Circles: Fifty Round Trips Through History Technology Scien Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Knowledge Web: From Electronic Agents to Stonehenge and Back -- A Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twin Tracks: The Unexpected Origins of the Modern World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Book of Bravery: A Novel 2,000 Plus Years in The Making Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Reviews for American Connections
8 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is a clever book, but it's not the one I was expecting when I saw the title. I figured it would be about how the founding fathers' revolutionary ideas were influenced by their reading, contacting, and otherwise hobnobbing with Enlightenment thinkers. (This would still make a good book, if someone would like to write it.) What American Connections provides instead is a shotgun smattering of historical trivia in which each chapter begins with a few sentences about one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence and then 'links' them over the next two hundred years (give or take a few decades) to someone (or something) of the same name. The 'connections' are not causal or significant in any way. They're of the type in which A is linked to B because he once attended a party that was catered by C who later hired D as head chef who married E who was once the mistress of F who... and on until we get back to someone with the same name as A. What makes this kind of a fun read despite its lack of any real relevance to the founding fathers is that, as I said, it's clever, and Burke's snarky prose makes it seem even more clever than it otherwise is.