The authors chronicle how a different group of nine founding fathers forged the wealth and institutions necessary to transform the American colonies from a diffuse alliance of contending business interests into one cohesive economic superpower.

Sheila Zarrow writes: Dr. Joseph Henderson was mentor to me for many years until his death in 2007 at age 104. He felt a deep connection to American history, was most interested in John Adams, and had spent some time on Benjamin Rush's farm. When I told Henderson about how I had spent three years meditating at the foot of Adams's statue in Worcester, Massachusetts, he enthusiastically encouraged me to study Adams, a study that led me also to Rush. My journey into their world ran parallel to my journey inward and the many synchronicities that came together with the writing of Friendship and Healing are testimony to the eternal nature of the living psyche. The letters of John Adams and Benjamin Rush depict the friendship that grew between the two as the course of history brought change into their lives and forced them to change themselves. Of particular interest are the dreams both men described in their letters and the evidence Zarrow has uncovered about how they considered the effects of their dreams. Rush, in his seminal text on medicine, wrote that dreaming is "as much a native faculty as memory or imagination." Dreams have meaning well beyond the personal and the present. They have roots and tendrils that stretch throughout the unknown inner world of our psyches. While we sleep, they make connections between our lives and the lives of others throughout history, back through mythology, and out to the eternal. Friendship and Healing explores one bright thread in the history of our country through the letters and dreams of two men who were there at the beginning.

How did the United States, founded as colonies with explicitly religious aspirations, come to be the first modern state whose commitment to the separation of church and state was reflected in its constitution? Frank Lambert explains why this happened, offering in the process a synthesis of American history from the first British arrivals through Thomas Jefferson's controversial presidency. Lambert recognizes that two sets of spiritual fathers defined the place of religion in early America: what Lambert calls the Planting Fathers, who brought Old World ideas and dreams of building a "City upon a Hill," and the Founding Fathers, who determined the constitutional arrangement of religion in the new republic. While the former proselytized the "one true faith," the latter emphasized religious freedom over religious purity. Lambert locates this shift in the mid-eighteenth century. In the wake of evangelical revival, immigration by new dissenters, and population expansion, there emerged a marketplace of religion characterized by sectarian competition, pluralism, and widened choice. During the American Revolution, dissenters found sympathetic lawmakers who favored separating church and state, and the free marketplace of religion gained legal status as the Founders began the daunting task of uniting thirteen disparate colonies. To avoid discord in an increasingly pluralistic and contentious society, the Founders left the religious arena free of government intervention save for the guarantee of free exercise for all. Religious people and groups were also free to seek political influence, ensuring that religion's place in America would always be a contested one, but never a state-regulated one. An engaging and highly readable account of early American history, this book shows how religious freedom came to be recognized not merely as toleration of dissent but as a natural right to be enjoyed by all Americans.

Psychologist, H. John Lyke, and author of What Would Our Founding Fathers Say?, asks the question: At the end of this century, will the United States still be a world leader or will we continue to be an inferior caricature of what we once were or, even worse, will we have become another fallen empire? Put another way, will the dreams and promises of Americans for their country continue to become unattainable?" This book offers political straight talk about todays issues between the right and the left by looking through the eyes of the patriots who wrote the plans for our fledging nation. Are we following that plan? What was between the lines that our representatives seem to have forgotten? What was expected of the citizenry that the rest of us are neglecting to do? Lyke provides a clear and impassioned plea to get back to basics. And he shows us, in this treatise of some substance, why the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights were written, and why those superb documents continue to stand the test of time. Lyke believes he has provided the bipartisan political formula necessary for his children and grandchildren, as well as his fellow Americans living in this country, to be able to live their lives with dignity, respect and a sense of purpose and pride of accomplishment - in a way not possible in the world of politics today.

Founding father George Washington’s boyhood defined our first president—see how in this picture book biography. As a boy, with the help of his teachers, George Washington created a list of the values of civility that he wanted to live by: 1. When another speaks, be attentive yourself and disturb not the audience. 2. Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation, for ’tis better to be alone than in bad company. This richly illustrated picture book is based on that little-known historical document and chronicles George Washington’s life from boyhood to his extraordinary leadership position as the first President of the United States of America.

Explores the family life of the Founding Fathers, providing intimate portraits of the households of such revolutionaries as George Mason, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.