Dennis C. Rasmussen, "Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders" (Princeton UP, 2021)
When Americans conjure the image of the signing of the Constitution of the United States, they often think about the various paintings that depict the Founders looking to George Washington on the dais at the convention. It is this snapshot of history that embodies Americans\u2019 perceptions of the Founders and their conviction in the creation of the great nation. What Americans fail to understand about America\u2019s Founding is the overwhelming anxieties that many of the Founders experienced, especially as they lived in the new republic that they had created. Not only did they find themselves anxious about the future of the new country, but many were also explicitly pessimistic about the future that they noted in so much of their later writings and letters. Dennis C. Rasmussen, in his new book\xa0Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of American Founders,\xa0addresses this gap in research on the American Founding, and on the Founders themselves. Washington, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison all wondered whether the system they had worked to establish, build, and defend would live beyond their own generation.\nIn\xa0Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders\xa0(Princeton UP, 2021), Rasmussen explores the enduring arguments made by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams that convinced them of America\u2019s inevitable demise. Modern Americans conceptualize the founding of the United States as an isolated moment in time, and rarely consider the reality of how the Founders spent the remainder of their lives putting the\xa0Constitution\xa0to work. Rasmussen places the founders\u2019 fears in context of the ongoing chaos of the late 1700\u2019s where other countries were facing revolution, treason, and anarchy.\xa0Fear of a Setting Sun\u2019s purpose is not to disregard the founders\u2019 optimism in the system they created, and in fact the book heralds James Madison\u2019s lifelong optimism and belief that the American experiment would prevail\u2014though he is at odds with the other major Founders in this regard.\xa0Fear of a Setting Sun\xa0explores the Founders\u2019 disillusionment in order to provide a fuller meaning of American constitutionalism and the value that is formed in its implementation. Rasmussen provides a perspective that changes what scholars and the general public believe and know about the founding of the republic, the historical stakes at the time of the founding, and how the Founders generally grew more pessimistic over time about the potential for the new republic to achieve its great potential.\nThis book will be of interest to political scientists, historians, students and scholars of the founding period and the ideas and personalities that dominated the early days of the American republic.\nShaina Boldt assisted with this podcast.\nLilly J. Goren\xa0is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book,\xa0Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics\xa0(University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of\xa0Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America\xa0(Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to\xa0@gorenlj.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law