Town Hall

What the Founders Learned From the Greeks and Romans

December 3, 2020

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Carl Richard, author of The Founders and the ClassicsThomas Ricks, author of First Principles: What the Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country, and Caroline Winterer, author of The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910, explore the influence of the Greeks and Romans on America's founders and ultimately a new nation. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.

 

Participants

Carl Richard is professor of history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is the author of several books, including: The Founders and the Classics: Greece, Rome, and the American and Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts: How the Ancients Inspired the Founding Fathers.

Thomas Ricks is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a #1 New York Times bestselling author. He covered the U.S. military for the Washington Post from 2000 through 2008 and was on the staff of the Wall Street Journal for 17 years before that. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is, First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

Caroline Winterer is William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and the chair of the History Department at Stanford University. Winterer has also curated two exhibits of rare books and artifacts: Ancient Rome & America at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia (2010) and The American Enlightenment at the Stanford Library (2011). She is the author of several books, including The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910.

Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.

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