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Washington • Sen. Mike Lee has penned a new book looking at the unsung heroes who helped found the United States and made sizable contributions to the new country.
Lee, a Utah Republican who has published two other books since his election in 2010, touts in his new book, "Written Out of History: The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government," women, slaves, American Indian chiefs and ancillary players who he said were impassioned opponents of big government and helped create the separation of powers, end slavery and prompt the Bill of Rights.
"Yet their faces haven't been printed on our currency. Their busts haven't been carved into any cliffs," the publisher, the Sentinel imprint of the Penguin Group, said in a news release about the new book. "Instead, they were marginalized, silenced, or forgotten — sometimes by an accident of history, sometimes by design."
The publisher says the book will look at Aaron Burr, depicted as a villain in the popular musical "Hamilton" (and in many history books), as a far more nuanced character who tirelessly battled abuse of executive power. It also delves into Mercy Otis Warren, a prominent female writer and protege of John Adams who fought broad federal power; an Iroquois chief, Canasatego, who taught Benjamin Franklin about the separation of government powers; and Elbridge Gerry, who championed individual and states' rights (and was the namesake of the gerrymander — after, as Massachusetts governor, he signed a bill enacting highly partisan redistricting).
Lee's office didn't respond to how much he would get paid for the book, though the senator has made more than $111,000 with his previous books while in office, according to financial disclosures.
That includes nearly $80,000 for his book "Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America's Founding Document," published in 2016; $7,500 for "Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare," published in 2013; and $25,000 from Eagle Publishing for "The Freedom Agenda" from 2011.