JOSEPH J. ELLIS is the author of many works of American history, including Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, which won the National Book Award. He lives on Hawk Mountain, in Plymouth County, with his wife and two labradoodles

"How did the founders manage to lose all sight of their revolutionary ideals when it came to African and Native Americans? 'Prejudice, avarice, and pusillanimity' was the assessment of one 1782 idealist, a formula Joseph J. Ellis unpacks here with his trademark clarity. Cutting through mist and myth, Ellis probes--on eighteenth-century rather than twenty-first-century terms--the questions that reduced thinkers like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to blithering incoherence. An elegant, concise volume that illuminates the obfuscations, misunderstandings, and hypocrisy that continue to sabotage us today." --Stacy Schiff, author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

"As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Joseph J. Ellis has given us a necessary corrective to any would-be triumphant narratives of America's founding. Fluidly written and cogently argued, The Great Contradiction puts the failures to abolish slavery and to avoid Indian removal at the heart of the country's creation story--failures that have shaped us to this day." --Annette Gordon-Reed, author of On Juneteenth

"The American Revolution is often encrusted with the barnacles of sentimentality and nostalgia; we see only what we want to see. Joseph Ellis has masterfully widened our lens to tell a deeper, more complex, more accurate story of our founding. The great figures and ideals are still there, but now they are accompanied by the stories of those left out of the prize of liberty and freedom." --Ken Burns, award-winning filmmaker

"The distinguished historian examines America's two original, foundational sins. . . . A provocative, revisionist view of the first years of the Republic." --Kirkus (starred review)

"Incisive. . . . A robustly complex portrait of the imperfect but dedicated shepherds of the first modern republic." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"This compelling history emphasizes aspects of the time that are not often illuminated and draws on rarely cited sources. . . . [An] insightful, noteworthy, and fresh history of the nation's founding." --Booklist (starred review)

"As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding, this volume offers an important and necessary perspective on the fight for American independence. . . . By examining the writing and revisions of the documents establishing this nation and their impact on enslavement and the Indigenous population, readers gain a perspective into a more nuanced version of U.S. history than what is usually taught." --Library Journal (starred review)

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

Pub date: 2025-10-28

Length: 240 pages