My wife is looking for some books on American and Constitutional philosphy?

My wife has been going crazy lately trying to debate people with the whole situation going on lately in the country and the constitution.


She looking for books not only from Franklin and Jefferson (the well known writers.) but those books from those not well known.

I don't believe Jefferson was directly involved in the Constitution except during his presidency.

really mold the constitution he did shape the Declaration and she feels it help shaped the constitution.


Please if it is wrong point her in the right direction.

but they should be read along side Hume and Locke. A lot of the ideas connect straight to those two... as well as Smith and all his writings, not just the Wealth.

Hey this is an intellectual historian talking here... ah connections... lovely connections. Of course to a point, though not directly influential, the French Physiocrats can be fun...really... chalk on board kind of fun.

Though Hofstadter on Intellectualism and Jacoby's book on Anti Intellectualism are a good place to start as well. They are general enough, but will get her on her way, and they both can write.

Her's is A voice of Reason

His is Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, and both can be had at the local bookstore.

Good advice there.

Carol Berkin, copyright 2002, publisher Harcourt Books. Gives good details on the constitutional debates.

books on general period history... and definitely realize that she also needs to read Hume and Locke's treatises on Government, since BOTH influenced heavily the Americans.

Oh and the Scottish Enlightenment figures prominently in the American idea of freedom at the time, as well as Rousseau and the rest of the boys in the French Enlightenment, especially with Jefferson and Franklin

As to our conservatives... start with John burke, while british a lot of the Tory\ Whig\ Modern ideas come from his reaction to the blood bath that was the French Revolution.

Oh and for an intimate look at how women were treated and lack of rights, definitely Abigail's letters to her husband are like a tour d'force.

If she has not done a thing in US History, I highly recommend Howard Zinn's History of the American People, not just is it progressive, but it is history from the bottom up, and there are some nice surprises in there by the way.

is "The Bill of Rights: Original Meaning and Current Understanding," edited by Eugene Hickok, Jr., (University of Virginia; 1991). It is a series of essays by many of the most respected Constitutional scholars of our era.

I'm not sure if you meant the Bill of Rights specifically, but it tends to be central to many of the current arguments about the way our government operates. If you are looking for other books, I can make further recommendations.

a more general, but very important history is Sean Wilentz's "The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln," (Norton & Co.; 2005). While his political beliefs and activities are not as attractive as, say, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., his talents as a historian are first rate.

There's no better anthology of the thinking that prevailed at the time, and they're widely available. I'm sure google would help if you asked nicely.

she has read all the federalist papers? those say a lot about the beliefs that shaped our nation

going back to the past to support her view points and hopefully make her more educated where she is wrong.


She'll probably get me and her flamed for this but she is so upset by the Way Corporate America is controling all aspects of the country and basically everything happening. She wants to get back to the basics.

She got accused of being a Tea Partier because she disagred with a view point / stance Obama recently took.

She's always considered herself a progressive liberal.

http://trueslant.com/rickungar/2010/01/22/what-did-the-founding-fathers-really-think-about-corporations-and-their-rights/

While some recommend that you read the Federalist Papers, I suggest the Anti-Federalist papers as well. In fact, you will likely learn more from them.

http://www.constitution.org/afp/afp.htm

your local library, or a local college/uni library if one is close to you. Librarians are trained to help folks do research just like this.

Seems unnecessary unless you were plowing through to a PhD.

For US Constitutional stuff, try reading anything by this author: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhil_Amar

Lots of paperbacks available. He is so heavy...man...he makes my brain hurt.

Otherwise, for a more pleasant read on American political philosophy, try Max Skidmore.

For primary sources, Madison, Montesquieu and Judge Blackstone.

albeit it is less Constitutional, and more about what compromises democracy in its content.

The collected pamphlets of Trenchard and Gordon (two English radical Country writers whose influence in republican thought was enormous),
any of the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers, such as Dugald Smith,
Bernard Bailyn's Ideological origins of the American Revolution,
Gordon Wood's The Creation of the American Republic,
Drew McCoy's The Elusive Republic,
Woody Holton's Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution,
David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism: 1776-1820
Linda kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America
Christopher Hill:The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution
Carla Pestana: The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution: 1640-1661.
Hall, et. al.: The Atlantic World in an Age of Empire
David Armitage, ed. The British Atlantic World 1500-1800
John Thornton: Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800.


I'll stop now...some of those provide a necessary context to the subject at hand. If she gets a handle on the context she'll be WAY ahead of the game in understanding.

The debate between so-called "strict constructionists" and the "judicial realists" has continued unabated.

Dang, you making me go back through my polisci-conlaw classes.

Federalist Papers is a good start.