You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Max M. Edling shows how the fledgling American government raised money and incurred debt for its military needs, from the War of Independence through the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War. America s military strength, Edling shows, was a function of its ability to raise money--and it was only when this ability flourished that America began to become an international power. By the time of the Civil War, Edling writes, less than a century after war broke out between Britain and her American colonies, the United States had traveled a long way toward its present position as the most powerful nation in the world. "
What were the intentions of the Founders? Was the American constitution designed to protect individual rights? To limit the powers of government? To curb the excesses of democracy? Or to create a robust democratic nation-state? These questions echo through today's most heated legal and political debates. In this powerful new interpretation of America's origins, Max Edling argues that the Federalists were primarily concerned with building a government that could act vigorously in defense of American interests. The Constitution transferred the powers of war making and resource extraction from the states to the national government thereby creating a nation-state invested with all the important ...
In Perfecting the Union, Max M. Edling focuses on the reform of the American Union brought about by the framing and adoption of the Constitution and the resulting division of duties and powers between the national government and the states. He argues that the Constitution profoundly altered the structure of the American Union and made the federal government more effective than under the defunct Articles of Confederation, but does not accept that federal power expanded at the expense of the states. He therefore offers a powerful new interpretation of the Constitution that has important implications for our understanding of the American founding.
Washington's Government shows how George Washington's administration--the subject of remarkably little previous study--was both more dynamic and more uncertain than previously thought. Rather than simply following a blueprint laid out by the Constitution, Washington and his advisors constructed over time a series of possible mechanisms for doing the nation's business. The results were successful in some cases, disastrous in others. Yet at the end of Washington's second term, there was no denying that the federal government had achieved remarkable results. As Americans debate the nature of good national governance two and a half centuries after the founding, this volume's insights appear timelier than ever. ContributorsLindsay M. Chervinsky, Iona College * Gautham Rao, American University * Kate Elizabeth Brown, Huntington University * Stephen J. Rockwell, St. Joseph's College * Andrew J. B. Fagal, Princeton University, * Daniel Hulsebosch, New York University * Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University
A multifaceted approach to The Federalist that covers both its historical value and its continuing political relevance.
This volume brings together the seminal essays of John M. Murrin on the American Revolution, the United States Constitution, and the early American Republic. 'Rethinking America' explains why a constitutional argument within the British Empire escalated to produce a revolutionary republic.
Publisher description
More than perhaps anybody else in the world, the Swedish political scientist and sociologist Björn Wittrock has contributed - both on the intellectual and institutional level - to making a truly global social science possible. This volume contains contributions from twenty-six world-renowned scholars who address different aspects of his ambitious research program as well as current trends in the institutionalization of the social and human sciences. The essays in this volume focus on such topics as: the role of the state; the reintegration of history and the social sciences; the importance of civilizational studies and the comparison of civilizations; the interaction of cultural and social dynamics; the analysis of trends in higher education and the institutionalization of social-scientific research.
When we talk about the economy, “the market” is often just an abstraction. While the exchange of goods was historically tied to a particular place, capitalism has gradually eroded this connection to create our current global trading systems. In Trading Spaces, Emma Hart argues that Britain’s colonization of North America was a key moment in the market’s shift from place to idea, with major consequences for the character of the American economy. Hart’s book takes in the shops, auction sites, wharves, taverns, fairs, and homes of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America—places where new mechanisms and conventions of trade arose as Europeans re-created or adapted continental meth...
Donald Trump’s election has forced the United States to reckon with not only the political power of the presidency, but also how he and his supporters have used the office to advance their shared vision of America: one that is avowedly nationalist, and unrepentantly rooted in nativism and white supremacy. It might be easy to attribute this dark vision, and the presidency’s immense power to reflect and reinforce it, to the singular character of one particular president—but to do so, this book tells us, would be to ignore the critical role the American public played in making the president “the man of the people” in the nation’s earliest decades. Beginning with the public debate ov...