The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783–1789

Here Ellis describes the hard-won journey undertaken by George Washington, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison to push the 13 colonies from pluribus to unum after the Revolutionary War. Dean, an experienced voice actor, narrates this satisfactory audio edition, exuding confidence with tone and dictation. His deep, rich bass lends a certain gravitas to the political machinations of the players involved. Yet Ellis’s narrative shows, in considerable detail, how tenuous, unlikely, and contested the quartet’s fight for a strong central government was, and Dean’s strong, stable reading lacks this air of uncertainty. The final hour of the audio book consists of Dean simply reading the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, and the Constitution of the United States. A Knopf hardcover. (May)