I put a note up on Twitter earlier today about how I think that the politics of this moment call for some reflection on our nation’s founding and offered to recommend books to those who are interested. The list below is a place to start. I will almost certainly fail to include some essential reading, and so may update this list as additional titles come to mind.
- The Federalist Papers (all available online FOR FREE here)
- James Madison’s Notes on the Constitutional Convention (also available in full online for FREE here). [For a critical analysis of Madison’s notes and note-taking, I recommend checking out Mary Sarah Bilder’s Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention]
- Alexis Tocqueville, Democracy in America
- Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States
- Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence
- David McCullough, 1776
- Gordon Wood, The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States
- Jack Rakove, Revolutionaries: a New History of the Invention of America
- Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
- Gordon Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 1776 – 1787
- Joyce Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans
- David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History
- Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, Slavery & Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution.
- Carol Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers: Women and the Struggle for American Independence
- Richard B. Bernstein, The Founding Fathers Reconsidered
- Richard B. Bernstein, A Very Short Introduction to the Founding Fathers
- Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution
- Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution
- Rosemarie Zagarri, Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic
- Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America
- Douglas Bradburn, The Citizenship Revolution: Politics and the Creation of the American Union, 1774-1804
- Douglas R. Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America
- Alan Gibson, Interpreting the Founding: Guide to the enduring Debates Over the Origins and Foundations of the American Republic
- Eliga H. Gould and Peter S. Onuf, Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in the Atlantic World.
- Willi Paul Adams: The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era
- Charles Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution
- Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution: 1787 – 1788
- Akhil Reed Amar, America’s Constitution A Biography
- Jack Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution
- Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution
- Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution
- Ray Raphael, Founding Myths
- David Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification
- Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights
- Carol Berkin, The Bill of Rights: The Fight to Secure America’s Liberties
- Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815
- Fergus M. Bordewich, The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government
- Joanne Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic
Another great list to check out is this one from the American Revolution blog.
There are also a number of excellent biographies of prominent figures from the Founding period. If there’s interest, I may list those in a separate post.
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