First Principles by Thomas E. Ricks

In FIRST PRINCIPLES: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country (Harper),Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author Thomas E. Ricks offers a revelatory new look at the founding fathers. Examining their educations—in particular, their devotion to the ancient Greek and Roman classics—Ricks demonstrates how that influence would shape their ideals and the new American nation. The book is already #4 on the New York Times Bestseller list.

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military for The Washington Post from 2000 through 2008 and was on the staff of the Wall Street Journal for seventeen years before that. He reported on American military operations in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan and Iraq. A member of two Pulitzer Prize-winning teams, he is also the author of several books, including The Generals, The Gamble, Churchill & Orwell, and the number-one New York Times bestseller Fiasco, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He wrote First Principleswhile a visiting fellow in history at Bowdoin College.