About this item
When they declared independence in Philadelphia in 1776, they changed the course of Western history. But the patriots - landowners, merchants, and professional men who hailed from towns, cities, and plantations scattered along the eastern seaboard - had private lives too, quite apart from the public deeds we know so well. In this breathtaking volume, historian Hugh Howard and photographer Roger Straus examine the everyday lives of the Founding Fathers. Houses of the Founding Fathers takes us on an eye-opening tour of forty stately eighteenth-century houses. We see the mansions of such legendary figures as Jefferson, Washington, Adams, and Hamilton, along with the homes of many other signers of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. At sites from Maine to Georgia, with stops in each of the thirteen colonies, the grand story of the Revolution emerges from unique and individual domestic perspectives. Houses overlooking the sea, in busy townscapes, or atop mountains reveal these patriots tastes in architecture, furniture, and horticulture. There are tales of friends and enemies, murderous relatives, reluctant revolutionaries, adoring wives, and runaway servants. The founding families are brought to life in the rituals of birth and death, the food they ate, the archaic medical practices they endured, their household arrangements, and the way their slaves lived. . Houses of the Founding Fathers offers a penetrating look at the private lives of the men whose ideas ignited an insurrection against England - and who helped create the modern world.
About the Author
The author of more than twenty much-admired books, Hugh Howard has written about architecture and landscape, presidents and painting. In telling stories of the past, he follows the fault lines where the lives of essential characters intersect. Thus in his newest book, ARCHITECTS OF AN AMERICAN LANDSCAPE (Atlantic, January 2022) , he traces the careers of Henry Hobson Richardson, who, though dead at just forty-seven, is still regarded by many as the nation's most influential architect, and of Frederick Law Olmsted, the man responsible for introducing parks to the American city. A narrative of friendship and collaboration, the book follows the two visionaries as they reimagine the American landscape during the radical changes of the post-Civil War era. The parents of two grown daughters, Hugh and wife Betsy divide their time between homes in the Hudson Valley and New Hampshire's Upper Valley. For more, see hughhoward.com.
