SLCL and the Missouri History Museum Present Historian H. W. Brands

St. Louis County Library Foundation’s Westfall Politics & History Series and the Missouri History Museum’s Thursday Nights at the Museum Series present renowned historian H. W. Brands for a discussion and signing of “Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and the Brawling Birth of American Politics.”

The event will take place on Thursday, December 7 in the Lee Auditorium at the Missouri History Museum, 5700 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63112.

H.W. Brands talk will start at 6:30 p.m. followed by a book signing session at 7:30 p.m. 

Starting at 5:00 p.m. the History Museum will offer a happy hour with food and drink for purchase from the Key Bistro. The Library & Research Center will offer a Historian’s Corner presentation about St. Louis’s connections to our Founding Fathers and other pop-up activities. 

The program is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase at the event from The Novel Neighbor.

H. W. Brands holds the Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. A New York Times bestselling author, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography for “The First American” and “Traitor to His Class.”

His latest book, “Founding Partisans,” offers a revelatory history of the shocking emergence of vicious political division at the birth of the United States.

To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were a fatal threat to republican virtues. They had suffered the consequences of partisan politics in Britain before the American Revolution, and they wanted nothing similar for America. Yet parties emerged even before the Constitution was ratified, and they took firmer root in the following decade. In “Founding Partisans,” master historian H. W. Brands has crafted a fresh and lively narrative of the early years of the republic as the Founding Fathers fought one another with competing visions of what our nation would be.

The country’s first years unfolded in a contentious spiral of ugly elections and blatant violations of the Constitution. Still, peaceful transfers of power continued, and the nascent country made its way towards global dominance, against all odds. “Founding Partisans” is a powerful reminder that fierce partisanship is a problem as old as the republic.

Program sites are accessible. With at least two weeks' notice, accommodations will be made for persons with disabilities. Call 314-994-3300 or contact us.