Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation Book

This book was the first book that ever made me cry because it was too hard to read pleasurably. I felt like the author took stories we all already know about, and locked himself in a dark room with a thesaurus and babelfish and used the LOLZCATZ approach to writing, only in historese. I frustra-cried, it was that bad.
I felt double bad about this book because I had bought it for my dad earlier in the year as a birthday gift, and when it was on the required reading list of my American History course I felt special because it was like, ---ooooh book club with dad!---, then I felt like a loser because this tiny book, that won a freaking National Book Award for nonfiction in 1997, was the bane of my existence, I was felled by this verbose dribble. I still get red in the face when I think about this book.