Gingrich's Inspiration
October 28, 2009
Stephanie Green

After transporting readers back in time with historical novels set during the Civil War and World War II, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and historian William R. Forstchen have released "To Try Men's Souls: A Novel of George Washington and the Fight for American Freedom."

Mr. Gingrich, who, as reported last week in The Washington Times, plans to evaluate his prospects for a 2012 presidential bid, stressed that his story's protagonist, the country's first commander in chief, is an especially resonant profile in courage in these uncertain times.

"America is a country based on a series of miraculous events defined by the people who lived through them," Mr. Gingrich explained to an overflow crowd at a book-signing event last week at Mount Vernon, Washington's plantation home in Virginia. "We're given a story in which the heroic elements verging on the miraculous are so factual that we thought it would give people new hope and new possibility."

The idea for "To Try Men's Souls" had been percolating for more than a decade, but Mr. Gingrich recalled that last fall, as the economic crisis deepened and an epic presidential election loomed, he, his publisher and his co-author concluded that 2009 offered the optimal publication window.

"I thought this would be a time in history when people were demoralized -- increasingly high unemployment with an aggressively left-wing administration trying to fundamentally replace our core values," he explained.

Mr. Gingrich said the recent backlash against the administration via "tea party" protests is a uniquely American expression, adding that "bills being drafted in secret and town-hall meetings being canceled" remind him of the British "arrogance" that launched the American Colonies on the path to revolution.
"Something has aroused some deep fundamental American sense which you capture in the revolutionary period," he said.

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