This thoughtful, elegantly written history by Joseph J. Ellis, who won the Pulitzer for Founding Brothers, makes the perfect gift for the pipe smoker on your holiday list. ''What besides dumb luck can account for the achievement that was the American founding?'' Ellis wonders early on in American Creation, and then proceeds to answer that question. From George Washington's calculations at Valley Forge to Jefferson's stunning Louisiana Purchase, Ellis revisits a handful of key junctures in our nation's early days, methodically separating fiction from fact, and the aforementioned ''dumb luck'' from the founders' brilliance. A-