TIME

Joseph J. Ellis

The best-selling historian on what the Founders got wrong, restoring faith in government and the case for national service

American Dialogue examines what George Washington, John Adams, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson might think about issues dividing the country today. Why did you address the present in this book?

I began work on this book two years before Donald Trump was elected President. But the forces that produced Trump, our deeply divided society unsure

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