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Edward J. Larson

Biography

Edward J. Larson

Edward J. Larson received the Pulitzer Prize for History for SUMMER FOR THE GODS: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion. He is the co-author of Modern Library’s THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison and author of THE RETURN OF GEORGE WASHINGTON: Uniting the States, 1783-1789, and A MAGNIFICENT CATASTROPHE: The Tumultuous Election of 1800. He was an inaugural fellow at the National Library for the Study of George Washington. Larson is University Professor of History and holds the Hugh & Hazel Darling Chair in Law at Pepperdine University. He travels widely as a media commentator, visiting instructor and guest speaker.

Edward J. Larson

Books by Edward J. Larson

by Edward J. Larson - Biography, History, Nonfiction

Theirs was a three-decade-long bond that, more than any other pairing, would forge the United States. Benjamin Franklin, an abolitionist freethinker from the urban north, and George Washington, a slaveholding general from the agrarian south, were the indispensable authors of American independence and the two key partners in the attempt to craft a more perfect union at the Constitutional Convention. Yet their teamwork has been little remarked upon in the centuries since. Illuminating Franklin and Washington’s relationship with striking new detail and energy, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward J. Larson shows that theirs was truly an intimate working friendship that amplified the talents of each for collective advancement of the American project.

by Edward J. Larson - History, Nonfiction

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward J. Larson recovers an important --- yet almost always overlooked --- chapter of George Washington’s life, revealing how Washington saved the United States by coming out of retirement to lead the Constitutional Convention and serve as our first president. Larson uncovers Washington’s vital role in shaping the Convention --- and shows how it was only with his support and willingness to serve as President that the states were brought together and ratified the Constitution, thereby saving the country.