Author visit and Talk - Woody Holton - Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution July 31, 2008

University of Richmond history professor "Woody Holton is not out to trash the Constitution. Its success, he says, is almost impossible to exaggerate. But his lively, provocative book -- a finalist for a National Book Award -- disputes the idea that the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution to protect civil liberties. They wanted, he says, to make the United States more attractive to investors, and for that reason consciously made American government less democratic than it had been."

This program is presented as part of Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America, a traveling panel exhibit that examines Hamilton's central role during the Revolutionary War and Founding period (1774-1804) in creating the economic, constitutional, social, journalistic, political and foreign policy templates for modern America. The exhibit will acquaint visitors with a statesman and visionary whose life inspired discussion and controversy and shaped the America we live in 200 years after his death.

The free exhibit will be on display at the James City County Library, 7770 Croaker Road, Norge from June 28 to August 7 during normal library hours. Programs associated with the exhibit can be found at http://www.wrl.org/hamilton. They are presented without charge thanks to a grant from the Friends of Williamsburg Regional Library.

Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America is organized by the The New-York Historical Society, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and the American Library Association. The traveling exhibition has been made possible in part through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, dedicated to expanding American understanding of human experience and cultural heritage.

The traveling exhibition is based on the New-York Historical Society's exhibition commemorating the 200th anniversary of Hamilton's death as well as the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Society in 1804.

Event submitted by Eventful.com on behalf of programs.