Virtue, Valor, and Vanity: The Founding Fathers and the Pursuit of Fame

Eric Burns's Virtue, Valor, and Vanity had been on my reading list for sometime before I finally got around to reading it over Labor Day weekend. It's a quick read, actually, and best thought of as a 40,000 foot view of Revolutionary America and the most famous of the Founding Fathers. Washington is there, of course, and Franklin, as is Adams (John, although also a few glimpses of Sam), as well as Jefferson, Hamilton, and Patrick Henry.

There's little here that history buffs will likely find new, although its presented succinctly and in a readable (rather than dry) style. The most interesting snapshots are of the Fathers I hadn't heard of: James Wilson and Button Gwinnett. And, yes, that was really his name. Wilson signed the Declaration of Independence and was also one of the original six justices appointed to the Supreme Court. It was during his tenure as justice that he also became a fugitive from the law; all these years later, he remains - unsurprisingly - the only person to have simultaneously been appointed to uphold justice in the highest court in the land while also fleeing those same scales of justice. You can't make this stuff up.

Gwinnett, too, signed the Declaration of Independence, before earning the distinction of becoming the first of the signers to die a violent death. Like Hamilton, he was killed in a duel. If his name rings a bell, however faintly, that may be because one of Georgia's largest counties is named for this knucklehead.

Did I like Virtue, Valor, and Vanity: The Founding Fathers and the Pursuit of Fame? Yes, absolutely. That said, by its very nature it offers a smaller window into Revolutionary America than Jeanne Abrams's Revolutionary Medicine, which is still probably my favorite book covering this time period.

Three and a half stars. (A little more Abigail Adams and a little less Alexander Hamilton and I probably would have given it four!)