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thearomaofbooks's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting read, but I overall felt more like I was reading a condensed history of the American Revolution/founding of Constitution, with a side focus on Henry rather than the other way around. There is only one brief chapter on the first 24 years of Henry's life, and throughout the rest of the book we are only given pieces of Henry's personal life in very brief (and sometimes weirdly snide) asides. Rather than making Henry more personable and accessible, Unger gives us a picture of a man's accomplishments rather than the man himself.
In a weird way, I realized about halfway through the book that it just didn't feel like Unger really liked Henry. I felt rather like he was rolling his eyes at many of Henry's dramatic speeches, and some of his comments about Henry's personal life came across as downright uncomfortable. E.g. - "...from then on, whenever Henry returned home he made certain that if his wife was not already pregnant from his last visit, she most certainly would be by the time he left." ???
Still, there was enough of Henry in this book to remind me why he was one of my childhood favorites. His passion not just for freedom from Britain, but from big government in general, his love for everyday people and preserving their independence, his emphasis on the critical importance of strengthening small, localized governments - these are all themes that still resonate with me today. I especially loved Henry's passion for the Bill of Rights, and his strong stance against the Constitution without them. Even more interesting is to see how so much of what Henry predicted has happened - in events that lead to the Civil War, and again today, with an ever-closing noose of interference and heavy taxation from a centralized government ever-distanced from the people it claims to serve.
For Lion, 3/5. A decent read for the political overview of Henry, but I would still like to get a hold of a biography that focuses more on him as a person and less on him as a founding father, and preferably without the snide remarks about how much Henry liked his wife.
In a weird way, I realized about halfway through the book that it just didn't feel like Unger really liked Henry. I felt rather like he was rolling his eyes at many of Henry's dramatic speeches, and some of his comments about Henry's personal life came across as downright uncomfortable. E.g. - "...from then on, whenever Henry returned home he made certain that if his wife was not already pregnant from his last visit, she most certainly would be by the time he left." ???
Still, there was enough of Henry in this book to remind me why he was one of my childhood favorites. His passion not just for freedom from Britain, but from big government in general, his love for everyday people and preserving their independence, his emphasis on the critical importance of strengthening small, localized governments - these are all themes that still resonate with me today. I especially loved Henry's passion for the Bill of Rights, and his strong stance against the Constitution without them. Even more interesting is to see how so much of what Henry predicted has happened - in events that lead to the Civil War, and again today, with an ever-closing noose of interference and heavy taxation from a centralized government ever-distanced from the people it claims to serve.
For Lion, 3/5. A decent read for the political overview of Henry, but I would still like to get a hold of a biography that focuses more on him as a person and less on him as a founding father, and preferably without the snide remarks about how much Henry liked his wife.
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