Category: Announcments

What a treat – reading the review of my book America’s Forgotten Founding Father in Angelus, the weekly Catholic magazine of Los Angeles.  I enjoyed the way the magazine’s reviewer,  Robert Brennan, compared Mazzei to Forest Gump in that he met so many other, far more well known Founding Fathers. Since it is a novel, Mr. Brennan had called me to ask about the historical accuracy of some of those meetings and I was happy to have been able to say that Mazzei led such an interesting life I didn’t need to make any of that up – even much of his dialogue comes from his own prolific correspondence with everyone from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams.

My favorite part of the review is the ending when Brennan shows how history teaches us how to handle our current lives.

“Although men like Jefferson, Washington and Adams represented a homogeneous group of white, English, Protestant, landed gentry, they all welcomed a new immigrant from a non-English speaking, predominantly Catholic country. And Filippo Mazzei showed that a Catholic could, in good conscience, be fully integrated into that great American experiment at its birth, and help christen it with a little holy water.”

Read the entire review – Not born of the 4th of July — but should have been by Robert Brennan

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Order an autographed copy of America’s Forgotten Founding Father

Print Edition | Kindle Edition | Apple iBooks Edition | Nook Edition

Also from the Mentoris Project

Want to use these books in your classroom? Contact the Mentoris Project!`

I’m happy to share this review for my book on Filippo Mazzei, America’s Forgotten Founding Father, from the Kirkus Review website.

I imagine all authors are nervous when hearing there is a professional review of their work available to view. But I fell in love with Filippo while researching this novel and figured other folks would, too. 

I’m especially happy they noted all the “intriguing historical tidbits” as those were so much fun to include.  It fuels my desire to get as many of those ‘intriguing historical tidbits’ into my new book on Garibaldi – but I admit that’s harder as these facts aren’t on the tip of my tongue the way American history is (after teaching it for the last 10 years) so the digging has taken me much longer. 

Read the review yourself!  And then (hopefully) order the book. Filippo did so much for our country, the least we can do is know his story.

Read the Kirkus Review – America’s Forgotten Founding Father

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Order an autographed copy of America’s Forgotten Founding Father

Print Edition | Kindle Edition | Apple iBooks Edition | Nook Edition

Want to use this book in your classroom? Contact the Mentoris Project!