The Great Little Madison by Jean Fritz

The first snag!   Accomplishing completion of book #4 proved to be a bit more difficult than 1-3...I bought "James Madison" by Ralph Ketcham and made it through 148 pages.   Those pages took me maybe half a year to read.   I seriously questioned whether I would ever finish the project....I still question it, but at least a little less than at that point.   I actually liked the book and there is no doubting that Ketcham did an exhaustive research effort before writing it...it's just that it was like eating tasty corn bread after leaving an all you can Tuesday night at Waffle House.   6 pages into the book and I had read more about the Madison family PRE-James than I have read about any family ever.   It was quite an amazing family, having spawned 2 U.S. Presidents (#4 and his second cousin, #12, Zachary Taylor), but that turned out to be indicative of the rest of the completely thorough review of James Madison's life.   I wouldn't say that it was boring, because it wasn't, it was just more than I was apparently looking for...so, I called an audible (and I do hope to finish the book someday, ya know, cus I ain't no quitter, and it was written pretty well, but as it threatened to derail the entire project I felt it best to move on) and found another James Madison book...well, that one turned out to be a 20 page kids level book, which would have made me upset with my Kindle, except that since it was only 99 cents I realized that I should've probably known something was up....SO, then I bought another James Madison book -- seems I spend money like our Founding Fathers, but anyway, this one was finally what I would consider good enough.   "The Great Little Madison" was only a few hundred pages long and kind of painted with a big brush, but having endured the 148 super detailed Ketcham pages and the wiki-plus sub-$1 attempt to satisfy "book #4 requirement" I was pleased with it.  Ralph Ketcham's book haunts me as it sits on the bookshelf, being nearly 800 pages long and therefore more visible than most, but I'll get to it someday so I guess I won't throw it on the fire...yet.   OK, so, let's just skip straight to the bullet points from here...The James Madison book list of things stupid Bobby learned:

• James Madison seriously wrote the Constitution of the United States of America.   I guess I figured it was maybe 50 people or something, and in a way I guess you could say it was even more than that, but he seriously wrote the thing.  It is amazing and I give him full credit.  
• He apparently studied all known attempts at formulation and experience of governments throughout the history of the world and used that incredible base to help achieve the tremendous accomplishment.   He then, being a scribe like perhaps no other person in public service before him, proceeded to team with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to explain The Constitution to the people and defend it expertly through the press.  Their efforts are called "The Federalist Papers" and I feel like I should probably stop the project and read them in their entirety before moving on, but, well, that's not gunna happen.  As a result of his efforts in writing The Constitution, explaining it in writing and defending it through his life, he was, well, the greatest defender of it in the country's history.   This fact makes me think that he'd probably be the best U.S. citizen to bring back to life if we ever had that power, but I'd probably still choose Len Bias (1963-1986) or Tiger Woods (1975-2009).
• Madison regularly made himself ill foregoing sleep and general health maintenance just to study/read/write.
• Aaron Burr introduced Madison to Dolly, who became Dolly Madison the hardest partying 1st lady in history (to that point she unquestionably was, I'll let you know if she loses the title).
• The Alien and Sedition Acts...just read about them, bizarre.  We really could've been like all the countries we think are insane.
• During his Presidency his two VP's died while in office.   Remind me not to mess with James Madison if I ever travel back in time.   
• The War of 1812 really was pretty questionable.
• Madison is on the $5000 bill.  I've never seen a $5000 bill.   I'd like to.   It would look like this:  http://www.marshu.com/articles/images-website/articles/presidents-on-us-paper-money/five-thousand-5000-dollar-bill.jpg  (I actually didn't learn this from the book, but since I'm now interested in Presidents I seem to learn all kinda stuff about them just through everyday life....Madison Square Garden for instance, named after good ol' quatro!)

And I march on to Mr. Monroe...