Acknowledgments Introduction: Remembering the Founders: Sex and the American Quest for a Relatable Past 1 George Washington 2 Thomas Jefferson 3 John Adams 4 Benjamin Franklin 5 Alexander Hamilton 6 Gouverneur Morris Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
Thomas A. Foster is Associate Professor in the History Department at DePaul University. He is the author of Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in America and the editor of three books, the most recent being Documenting Intimate Matters: Primary Sources for a History of Sexuality in America.
"In this concise, engaging book, Foster (Sex and the
Eighteenth-Century Man) explores the intimate lives of six Founding
Fathers, and, more importantly, the way their sex lives have been
presented and analyzed over the years. Focusing on George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin,
Alexander Hamilton, and the oft-forgotten Gouverneur
Morris, Foster deftly demonstrates the ways these men’s
private lives have been essentially rewritten to present the
normative, virtuous, and manly Founders Americans choose to believe
in. Drawing primarily from popular biographies, from the colonial
era through present day, the book explores the ways biographers
present their subjects in response to the times: strict Victorian
morals, Freudian psychoanalysis, and contemporary attempts to
embrace, rather than hide, all aspects of their
lives. Foster addresses the glossing over of Washington’s
lack of children (perhaps he was sterile, but god forbid he was
impotent), the refashioning of Franklin’s Parisian affairs as the
“harmless” pleasures of a “foxy grandpa,” and the romanticized
marriage of John and Abigail Adams—the “Romeo and Juliet of the
American Revolution”. Proving that you can’t trust
biographers, Foster ably reveals that sex has always
factored into national identity and that the Founders were
flesh-and-blood men, unable to support idealistic American
standards of morality."--Publishers Weekly
"Sex and the Founding Fathers is a must read for all who are
interested in the founding era and the historiography of the
period."
—Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello:
An American Family
"Foster tells us that each new generation has inquired into the
intimate lives of great men and found reflections of its own habits
and desires and anxieties....Using the methods of intellectual and
cultural history, Foster examines contemporary and scholarly
interpretations of the sex lives of George Washington, Thomas
Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and
Gouvernor Morris. Foster holds that we read and write about our
Founding Fathers’ intimate habits because we want these icons of
masculinity to be relatable. Foster is right; we do seek ourselves
in our histories."—Journal of American History
"[Foster's] book is not directly about sex and the founding fathers
but is instead a meta-commentary on the long history of popular and
scholarly fascination with the founders’ sexual lives.... This is a
book about our desired erotic relations to the erotic
lives of the founders. But it seems to be forever impossible for us
to have a stable relation to the sex of the founding fathers: our
relation to their sex always and inevitably fails because it’s
really about us and what kind of objects we want them to be for
us... Wisely, Foster does not try to say what a true or authentic
relation to the sex of the founders would be."—Christopher
Looby, American Literary History
"Sex and the Founding Fathers has value as a source of
data.... [which] raises important questions about gender,
sexuality, and masculinity as normative and actual behaviors shift
that over time as they structure personal and national
identities." —American Studies
"Foster reveals how each generation has sought to understand the
founders as human beings.... it is through exploring these men as
people that we understand and relate to them. As times and social
mores about masculinity and sexuality have changed, so have
interpretations of these men and their personal lives. VERDICT:
Foster is looking at the how and why of his subjects. Readers
looking for...a better understanding of how and why biographers
explore these topics, and why we care, should look to this
fascinating and well-written work."—Library Journal
"What fascinates [Foster], and what’s the subject of his book, is
how the public has always hungered for stories about the Founders’
sex lives. At root, Foster argues, sex has always been a critical,
though underappreciated way that Americans have tried to make the
Founders relatable. It’s how we make them seem human, if no less
heroic.... Foster’s subject should lure more readers than a typical
academic book. But they should expect a serious message. We crave
stories about the Founders’ sex lives, but cannot handle the
unseemly truths, he writes—'so we rewrite and respin and reremember
them in various ways to present them in a positive light.' Our
'romanticized view,' gets us no closer to knowing who [the]
Founders actually were, and ultimately 'serves only the
present.'”—Daily Beast
"Here is a scrupulous scholarly book that edifies and entertains —
and has as much to say about the genre of biography as it does
about the sex lives of the founding fathers." —StarTribune
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
