Historian Ray Raphael has chosen seven representative characters—some famous, some unknown—to anchor a sweeping new history of the entire Founding Era, from the beginnings of unrest in 1761 through the passage of the Bill of Rights thirty years later. Readers experience the Revolutionary War by following the lives of both George Washington and a private soldier in his army. America’s richest merchant, who rescued the nation from bankruptcy, goes head-to-head with a peripatetic revolutionary who incited rebellion in seven states. Rounding out the company is a richly nuanced cast of other characters, including Mercy Otis Warren, the most politically engaged woman of the times; a common village blacksmith; and a conservative slave owner, together with his abolitionist son. The culmination of Raphael’s extensive research into the history and meaning of our nation’s origins, Founders returns us to the dynamic roots of American patriotism.