Joseph Ellis presented 'The Second Founding: Four Men Who Created a Country' on September 28, 2016 at the University of Minnesota's Ted Mann Concert Hall.

Ellis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author of The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783–1789, discussed one of the most crucial periods in American history — the years between the end of the Revolution and the formation of the federal government — and the men most responsible for the creation of the United States: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. The event, attended by nearly 700 people, was sponsored by the Friends of the University of Minnesota Libraries.