"George Washington laughing? That the venerable Father of Our Country, the austere and unfailingly honest leader of historical record and legend, had a penchant for tall tales and crafty quips seems unthinkable to most Americans, even today. In The Wit & Wisdom of the Founding Fathers, historian and scholar Paul Zall shatters the sober image of American icons George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin to reveal - and celebrate - their natural bent for incisive, spirited humor." "With ample quotes from personal correspondence and private memoirs, Zall peers behind the staid and serious facade of our first three presidents and demonstrates how each strove to suppress his sense of mirth to maintain a dignified public reputation. By lifting the curtain on our Founding Fathers as they engage in practical jokes and regale friends with humorous stories, Zall opens a window on their personalities otherwise obscured by our preconceptions of them as larger-than-life historical figures. While Franklin's humor and wisdom is legendary thanks to his authorship of Poor Richard's Almanac, readers will be surprised to learn that Washington had a penchant for biting sarcasm; that Adams engaged in direct, colloquial, even vulgar, humor; and that Jefferson, our most cerebral president, enjoyed laughing at the absurdity of his own situation as leader of the nation."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

No group is quoted--and misquoted--more often than America's founders. When a political controversy heats up, the nation's speechwriters, politicians, reporters, editorial writers, and talking heads try to influence the debate by quoting their words. Year in and year out, teachers and political buffs look to their wisdom to illuminate the issues. How much easier it would be to find every key quote by the founders in a single source. The Quotable Founding Fathers, edited by Buckner F. Melton, Jr., provides just that source--a compilation of some 2,500 quotes summing up the wit and wisdom of the founders. While some of these quotations can be found in general quotation compilations such as Bartlett's, these volumes offer only a fraction of what's available. The Quotable Founding Fathers mines deeper into the founders' essays, diaries, letters, speeches, and sermons to extract all the nuggets that are significant to the history of the country-- and to the ongoing debate about the meaning of democracy in America.

Discusses our country's current crisis as compared with the original intentions for America.

Introduces the life and accomplishments, from A to Z, of a Founding Father, from armonicas to bifocals, with adages and cartoons.

Hundreds of delightful aphorisms, carefully selected from many issues of Franklin's popular 18th-century publication: "He that lies down with Dogs, shall rise up with fleas" and many others.

A book of advice from our nation's founders on how to be a good citizen and a worthy member of civil society.