Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788
10 best books like Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 (Pauline Maier): Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787, The Debate on the Constitution, Part 1: Federalist and Anti-Federalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification: September 1787 to February 1788, The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790, Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices, Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, Writings, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution
| Author | Catherine Drinker Bowen |
| ISBN | 0316103985 |
A classic history of the Federal Convention at Philadelphia in 1787, the stormy, dramatic session that produced the most enduring of political documents: the Constitution of the United States.
From Catherine Drinker Bowen, noted American biographer and National Book Award winner, comes the...
| Author | Bernard Bailyn |
| ISBN | 0940450429 |
In this Library of America volume (and its companion) is captured, on a scale unmatched by any previous collection, the extraordinary energy and eloquence of our first national political campaign.
When the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia ended its secret proceedings on September...
| Author | David M. Potter |
| ISBN | 0061319295 |
“David M. Potter’s magisterial The Impending Crisis is the single best account to date of the coming of the Civil War.” —Civil War History
“The magnum opus of a great American historian.” —Newsweek
Now in a new edition for the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War, David...
| Author | Jack N. Rakove |
| ISBN | 0679781218 |
From abortion to same-sex marriage, today's most urgent political debates will hinge on this two-part question: What did the United States Constitution originally mean and who now understands its meaning best? Rakove chronicles the Constitution from inception to ratification and, in doing so,...
In this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Rhys Isaac describes and analyzes the dramatic confrontations--primarily religious and political--that transformed Virginia in the second half of the eighteenth century. Making use of the observational techniques of the cultural anthropologist, Isaac...
| Author | Noah Feldman |
| ISBN | 0446580570 |
A tiny, ebullient Jew who started as America's leading liberal and ended as its most famous judicial conservative. A Klansman who became an absolutist advocate of free speech and civil rights. A backcountry lawyer who started off trying cases about cows and went on to conduct the most important international...
| Author | Jeff Shesol |
| ISBN | 0393064743 |
Roosevelt’s fiercest, most unyielding opponent was neither a foreign power nor “fear itself”—it was the U.S. Supreme Court.
During Franklin Roosevelt’s first term, a narrow conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court struck down several key elements of the New Deal legislation....
| Author | Sean Wilentz |
| ISBN | 0393058204 |
In this magisterial work, Sean Wilentz traces a historical arc from the earliest days of the republic to the opening shots of the Civil War. One of our finest writers of history, Wilentz brings to life the era after the American Revolution, when the idea of democracy remained contentious, and Jeffersonians...
| Author | Alexander Hamilton |
| ISBN | 1931082049 |
One of the most vivid, influential, and controversial figures of the American founding, Alexander Hamilton was an unusually prolific and vigorous writer. As a military aide to George Washington, forceful critic of the Articles of Confederation, persuasive proponent of ratification of the Constitution,...
| Author | Forrest McDonald |
| ISBN | 0700603115 |
This is the first major interpretation of the framing of the Constitution to appear in more than two decades. Forrest McDonald, widely considered one of the foremost historians of the Constitution and of the early national period, reconstructs the intellectual world of the Founding Fathers--including...
When Thomas Jefferson took the oath of office for the presidency in 1801, the United States had just passed through twelve critical years, years dominated by some of the towering figures of our history and by the challenge of having to do everything for the first time. Washington, Hamilton, Madison,...
| Author | Gordon S. Wood |
| ISBN | 1594202907 |
The preeminent historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history.
More than almost any other nation in the world, the United States began as an idea. For this reason, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood believes that the American...
| Author | Joanne B. Freeman |
| ISBN | 0300097557 |
In this extraordinary book, Joanne Freeman offers a major reassessment of political culture in the early years of the American republic. By exploring both the public actions and private papers of key figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, and Alexander Hamilton, Freeman reveals an alien and...
| Author | John Ferling |
| ISBN | 0195176006 |
It was an age of fascinating leaders and difficult choices, of grand ideas eloquently expressed and of epic conflicts bitterly fought. Now comes a brilliant portrait of the American Revolution, one that is compelling in its prose, fascinating in its details, and provocative in its fresh interpretations.
In...
| Author | Maya Jasanoff |
| ISBN | 1400041686 |
On November 25, 1783, the last British troops pulled out of New York City, bringing the American Revolution to an end. Patriots celebrated their departure and the confirmation of U.S. independence. But for tens of thousands of American loyalists, the British evacuation spelled worry, not jubilation....
| Author | Richard Beeman |
| ISBN | 1400065704 |
The popular view of the Constitution is pretty well expressed by John Milton, and I'll quote it here:God, from the Mount of Sinai, whose gray top shall tremble, He descending, will Himself, in thunder, lightning, and loud trumpets' sound, ordain them laws.
-Paradise LostWell, G-d did it through...
| Author | Woody Holton |
| ISBN | 0809080613 |
Average Americans Were the True Framers of the Constitution
Woody Holton upends what we think we know of the Constitution’s origins by telling the history of the average Americans who challenged the framers of the Constitution and forced on them the revisions that produced the document we...
| Author | Alan Taylor |
| ISBN | 1400042658 |
In this deeply researched and clearly written book, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Alan Taylor tells the riveting story of a war that redefined North America. During the early nineteenth century, Britons and Americans renewed their struggle over the legacy of the American Revolution....
James Madison and the Making of America
| Author | Kevin R.C. Gutzman |
| ISBN | 0312625006 |
In James Madison and the Making of America, historian Kevin Gutzman looks beyond the way James Madison is traditionally seen -- as "The Father of the Constitution; -- to find a more complex and sometimes contradictory portrait of this influential Founding Father and the ways in which he influenced...
