New Book Explores the Faith and Ideals Behind America's Founding

0:00 Speaker 1 Well, Sunday Morning with us today is Eric Mtaxas, an American author, a speaker, our conservative radio talks show host and with the Eric Metaxas Show and also Socrates in the City. Well, Eric Mtaxas, we known each other a long time. Yeah, and you have a new book called Revolution.

0:22 Tell us about this?

0:24 Speaker 2 Well, thanks John, And just the fact that there’s a catch of Matitis and a Metaxas on the radio together, I’m already happy. You know, I can’t help it. New York Greek Americans that love America. That’s really at the heart of the new book. I said, you know, this is our two hundred and fiftieth and I’m a writer.

0:42 I’ve written a lot of history books and whatever, but I write on a popular level. I write books that I hope people really want to read. And I said, we need an accounting of what happened two hundred and fifty years ago. We call it the Revolution. What was the revolution? What started the revolution? What did the men

1:00 of the revolutions believe that would lead them to fight, you know, with muskets against the greatest army in the world. And so I just wanted to write a book that tells that story. And everybody said to me, well, Eric, you know, what’s your angle. I said, I have no angle.

1:16 I think as Americans we have a duty to know our story. Many of us forgot it, many of us we heard it in school. We live in a culture. Let’s face it, you and I, especially living in New York, it’s not so positive on America. We always hear negative stuff neggar, and I know most of that is wrong.

1:37 Most of that attitude is wrong. I wanted to write a book for people that want to know the true story of how America came into being, what led to Lexington and conquered, what happened during the war, and the figures involved are so amazing. I get embarrassed sometimes. These men were such heroes, and I’m embarrassed, and I didn’t

1:55 know their whole stories. As I’m writing the book, I was so inspired. I said, all right, at least I can get this out to my fellow Americans, because we really have an obligation. We have a debt, a duty to know our history, to know our story, not to listen to the voices that tell us America is bad.

2:14 America’s you know, it’s just ninety percent nonsense, But it’s been pushed out over the decades, especially to younger people. But it’s all over the culture. I mean, even the ken Burns PBS series was so negative. I was just stunned at the negativity and the handwringing. I thought, the story of America coming into being is one of the

2:34 greatest stories in the history of the world, the creation of a nation where the people actually govern themselves. And the reason the book is titled Revolution and not even American Revolution. I say this is the only actual revolution in the history of the world that succeeded radically in doing what it said it was going to do. It

2:53 said it’s going to put the government in the hands of the people. It actually did that. Think of the French Revolution a couple of years later. It did nothing. It turns, it gets rid of the king. Then they start murdering the priests and nuns. They push God out, they get a blood bath, and they replace the king

3:08 with a dictator emperor named Napoleon. You know, most of them, Our revolution is the only revolution. And this is a big part of my book. God was at the center. Most Americans have not heard that, or you’re hearing from history professors or whatever that don’t like that idea, so they speak against it. The Founders put God at the center. Now,

3:29 you can’t force God on people, and they didn’t do that. We have religious liberty, you can believe whatever you want. But they understood that we can’t just replace the king with nothing. We have to look to God directly. That’s what self government is. And again we can’t legislate it, but that was the idea. I was astonished at how

3:46 every single one of the men involved understood this narrative, not just a couple of them, but even the ones we don’t think of as that religious, like Jefferson and Franklin, even they understood this narrative that that’s what they were doing.

4:00 So it is an amazingly positive, inspiring story. And I wanted to tell the whole story from the beginning, how it all started, and who the characters were and why they did it, all the way to the Treaty of Parrots seventeen eighty three. It’s just an amazing thing. And I thought if somebody could tell the story in one volume,

4:18 because you know, you could read twenty books on this, but just to tell everything you need to know, you know, I keep joking around. I say, hey, it’s going to be on the test. You’re an American. You need to know this stuff.

4:28 Speaker 1 So that’s the book, and nikold by it where Amazon and.

4:35 Speaker 2 Amazon is probably the best. But if anybody goes to my website, Ericmataxis dot com, there’s three or four different options, you know, if you want it to get shipped quicker, there’s different options, Ericmataxis dot com. But one thing I didn’t tell you. It is number two on the New York Times bestsello list this week. It outsold Jill Biden’s

4:57 book by five thousand copies. The New York I’m still put it number two, not number one. All the other bestseller lists, publishers, Weekly, Amazon, they all put it at my book at number one this week, the number one bestseller.

5:09 But the New York Times, you know, they got a problem with the positivity about America, so they had to put Joel Biden in number one. I’m not making it up. The numbers don’t lie, but the New York Times, I think sometimes does. So I got to say, I’m so happy that it’s selling like crazy. I thank God because

5:26 I believe the country we need to be inspired by our story. We need to know our story. So you know, I’m very very excited. I didn’t expect it to be number one on all these lists for the first week.

5:37 Speaker 1 Well, Eric Mctexas, thank you so much for coming on. And I promise that I will read the book. Is it available by a voice?

5:48 Speaker 2 Oh? I did the whole audio book. It took me forty hours in a studio. I read the whole book myself, as I do with all my books. I think it’s important. So if people just want to listen to it while they’re, you know, doing whatever they do, that’s a great way to get it too. So thanks for bringing that up.

6:06 Speaker 1 Eric from Texas, thank you, and God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you so much.

6:10 Speaker 2 Thank you. John