Our Founding Fathers revealed

By JAMES PRICHARD

ASSOCIATED PRESS

“Virtue, Valor & Vanity: The Founding Fathers and the Pursuit of Fame” by Eric Burns (Arcade Publishing, $25)

There have been a number of well-written, well-received books in recent years about the nation’s Founding Fathers. Several have been lengthy, exhaustively researched biographies focusing on one subject, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams or Alexander Hamilton.

Eric Burns,host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox News Watch,” takes a different approach in “Virtue, Valor & Vanity” by comparing and contrasting the founders’ lives and personalities. The bulk of this original and entertaining book examines several of the founders’ shared qualities — good and bad — and to what extent traits such as ambition, modesty, jealousy and vanity shaped their characters.

They were famous men — even in their own lifetimes — who generally considered fame a virtue. Still, writes Burns, Jefferson seemed “genuinely indecisive” about its merits, while Adams “was dubious about acclaim because he feared he would never achieve it, at least not to the extent he desired.”

Others who coveted fame rarely admitted their desire for it.

“If fame was an end for the Founding Fathers, then ambition was the means,” says Burns. “Even Washington and Jefferson, among the least driven of the men who made America, were eager to publicize their names and control their reputations.”

To others, such as Benjamin Franklin, ambition came so naturally and was such an integral part of their personalities that the matter didn’t seem worthy of contemplation.

Burns manages to unearth some unusual nuggets of information, such as how Jefferson believed that the desk upon which he wrote the Declaration of Independence should be considered a national treasure and increase in value with the passing years.

The author mostly marvels at how this collection of brilliant but flawed men overcame their faults and differences to forge a new nation.