THE FOUNDING FORTUNES: HOW THE WEALTHY PAID FOR AND PROFITED FROM AMERICA’S REVOLUTION

March 28, 2019

St. Martin’s Press in January 2020: THE FOUNDING FORTUNES: HOW THE WEALTHY PAID FOR AND PROFITED FROM AMERICA’S REVOLUTION

Pre-publication praise:

“An ingenious examination of how money played the central role in the founding of the United States … Shachtman emphasizes that [after the Revolution] no mass movement demanded change. The Constitution was championed “by a very small subset of the country’s wealthy.” They looked after their own interests, and their priorities were social order, contracts, collecting debts, and a strong currency. However, as the author shows, unlike the ultrawealthy today, most embraced equality of opportunity …. A provocative argument that wealthy men built America and did a good job.” – Kirkus Reviews

“I was raised to think of the American Revolution as a rare moment in history in which neither “cherchez la femme” nor “follow the money” would get you to the truth. Yet in The Founding Fortunes, following the money reveals a gritty reality that we can’t access any other way. It evokes the sights, sounds and psychology of the era more vividly than a whole shelf of books about lofty ideals and governance.” – Peter Petre, former executive editor, Fortune.

Publication of ECHOES, OR THE INSISTENCE OF MEMORY, August 2023. Pre-orders available on Amazon and Madville Publishing

Manuscript evaluation and editing for individual students based on my extensive publication history and many years teaching at major university writing programs.

Fees and schedules available upon request. Payment by Paypal or check…

Published in 2020: THE MEMOIR OF THE MINOTAUR, a novel, from Madville Publishing; and THE FOUNDING FORTUNES: HOW THE WEALTHY PAID FOR AND PROFITED FROM AMERICA’S REVOLUTION, from St. Martin’s Press.

Podcast about THE FOUNDING FORTUNES with Walter Woodward, State Historian for Connecticut

Digital-Only Publications

The first volumes in my historical novel series, The Eagle’s Claw, about a secret, private organization that undertakes tasks for the President – some illegal, some scandalous, and all extraordinary — that the government cannot do but that need doing.

“The Pirate of Lake Erie,”

and
“The Perilous Letter of the Apalachicola.”

… and the non-fiction tale, The Commies, the Jewish Mob, the Union and My Grandfather: The Fur-Worker Wars of the 1920s.

Photo (c) by Anne Day
Hi, I’m Tom Shachtman, author, filmmaker and educator. I’ve written forty books, mostly for mainstream publishers, as well as television documentaries seen on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and other channels, and lectured at universities from Harvard to Georgia Tech to Stanford, and at libraries from the New York Public to the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Newberry in Chicago, and the Hoover Institution.

My trilogy of books providing new perspectives on the American Revolution are now all in print. THE FOUNDING FORTUNES (2020); HOW THE FRENCH SAVED AMERICA (2017); and GENTLEMEN SCIENTISTS AND REVOLUTIONARIES (2014).

Earlier books continue to attract attention.

ABSOLUTE ZERO was recently reviewed as an important classic in the
Feb. 1, 2022 issue of Forbes

WHOEVER FIGHTS MONSTERS, written with Robert K. Ressler, an international bestseller, is now a must-have audio book for those interested in serial killers. AMERICAN ICONOCLAST, my biography of Eric Hoffer, the “longshoreman philosopher,” was occasion for a recent interview with Canadian Broadcasting. In December 2019, SKYSCRAPER DREAMS, my history of the builders of New York City, was the top recommendation for holiday reading of the real-estate industry magazine The Real Deal. ABSOLUTE ZERO AND THE CONQUEST OF COLD was featured on several recent must-read lists of popular science.

More details about these and other books are in the following pages of this website. Read on!