A candlemaker's son from the leather-aproned class. A farmer's boy who lost his first legal case. An orphaned immigrant who wrote his way out of poverty. A spymaster who once pledged loyalty to the Crown. A frail scholar who hid his epilepsy while drafting the Constitution. A young Virginian tasked with declaring America's independence. And the man they all trusted to hold it together.
THE MOVERS & SHAPERS tells America's founding story through the seven men who did the most to build it: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. In vivid portraits packed with moments you never learned in school, Dr. Jennifer London and Taylor Baldwin Kiland reveal what drove each man, how their legendary rivalries produced the Constitution, and why their unfinished work still belongs to us.
Built on the founders' own words, this is narrative history for readers who want to know the people behind the parchment-and for anyone who has wondered how thirteen quarrelsome colonies formed a nation. Franklin famously said they built "a republic, if you can keep it." Here is the story of the men who gave us one and a reminder that it survives only as long as we understand what we inherited.