Surveys the Revolutionary War era, demonstrating America’s founding is a product of shared search for principles of civic equality and justice. As with Burkean or Whig historians, Morgan argues for a revolution not made but preserved; this effort covers the details of articulating protest, organizing around the colonies’ common political views, and ultimately framing the American Constitution. The work’s eloquence lies in persuasively tying emergent principles to facts on the ground. A 21st-century analysis would hit harder at the moral failure to dispose of slavery — but then most latter-day treatments pettifog in ways which Morgan surmounts. Interestingly, the author contends the Articles of Confederation were not quite as dire as commonly held, and ties the Bill of Rights to the Constitution’s adoption by the states as a quid pro quo.
9. Paulsen and Paulsen, The Constitution (18 May 2016)
Illustrates vital political concepts and shortcomings in the American constitution, before going on to narrate five distinct periods of jurisprudence: to 1860, postbellum, to World War II, to 1960, and the current activist era. The Constitution does not establish judicial supremacy but the document’s supremacy: it is intended to surmount the clash of opinions. The authors view the document as broadly successful, save for the stunning failure of allowing slavery, because it has tended to move toward justice rather political fashion. But the justices themselves have often stood in the way of progress for long periods of time, and continue to legislate from the bench. The heroes in fact are Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, and others who have fought for the Constitution’s preservation and the revision of its application.
10. Hibbert, House of Medici (4 June 2022)
Portrays the dominion of the Florentine Medici over the 15th to early 18th centuries, emphasizing the family’s contribution to the arts and latterly its dissolute lifestyle. Rising to power under the republican constitution as wool traders and then bankers with the papal accounts, the foremost Medici figures were Cosimo and Lorenzo; a subsequent Cosimo was Florence’s first duke. Hibbert seems most interested in the provenance of culture and architecture. Though he sketches civic matters, one cannot tell whether the decline of agriculture and trade results from poor leadership, the changing economics of (for example) Atlantic trade, or the Italian city-states’ inferiority to emerging nation-states north of the Alps. Undoubtedly learned but not particularly helpful for understanding society and statesmanship.
10. Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (2 Jun 2016)
The fox knows many things but cannot produce a unified theory of being; the hedgehog searches for a core certainty that explains all. Isaiah Berlin’s essay studies the extraordinary instance of Leo Tolstoy, who brilliantly portrayed quotidian life but sought for a holistic view. In this history of ideas, the author contends the Russian drew heavily on the French conservative Joseph de Maistre.
11. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War (3 Jul 2016)
Narrates the central event in 17th-century German lands, masterfully weaving military and political events; religious, regional, and class attitudes; and individual leadership and failure. The political dysfunction of German lands, including but not limited to the supra-‘national’ role of Hapsburg Austria, was the cause not the consequence of the internecine fighting. Sweden and France merely took advantage, and sectarian conflict was simply an activating force. German leaders (princes) several times missed their chance to coalesce, to set aside religion and dynastic interests. Broad in its sweep yet finely detailed. Perhaps the professional historians will have revised some of Wedgwood’s findings, both with the passage of time and because she was not a member of the guild, yet this is how history should be done.
12. Taylor, The Course of German History (21 Jul 2016)
A heavily (overly?) synthesized summary of German-speaking, central European lands from the French Revolutionary era to the start of World War II. ‘Germany’ failed to coalesce around liberal, popular leadership in 1848, ushering in fealty to indebted Prussian Junkers who were able to claim a national mandate but lost control of events. The conflict between greater and little Germany (e.g., with or without Habsburg Austria, or Polish and Bohemian Slovak peoples), the successes and failures of individuals (even Bismarck) is generally subjected to a clever but somewhat pat trajectory of inexorably class-driven events. Better read as a complementary work than a standalone monograph.
13. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (18 Aug 2016)
Studies mid-Victorian society and politics, contending that education and culture (‘sweetness and light’) is a surer path toward human perfection than religion or government. Culture promotes considering social issues from many angles, whereas religion (especially Dissent, preoccupied as it is with disestablishment) trends toward a single, inflexible approach. Hebraism is obedience to authority, Hellenism is independence of thought. Arnold also treats of class (aristocrats, bourgeois, and working) views of political order and governance, which are inevitably self-interested and so again want the leavening of culture. Libertine individualism is the greatest of all ills.
14. Smith, Political Philosophy (5 Sep 2016)
The core problems of political philosophy are largely the same as those considered in the Classical age: our contemporary issues are most intelligible when viewed through the lens of democratic-minded masters from Socrates to Tocqueville. That is, the field is not progressive (additive) and certainly not historicist. The main issues deal with law and justice; authority and order; who should rule (what is the statesman)?; what is the best regime, and what is its relationship to the actual (current) regime?; what is a good citizen, and what is the relationship to the ideal (virtuous or perfect) person? The primary subject of political judgement is decision making. The conclusion departs from its study of towering figures to assert the national and the cosmopolitan (i.e., the ideal) each have a role to play is shaping the patriot. The answer depends mightily on the ethos of the people.
15. Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (10 Oct 2016)
Evaluates the conceptual novelty and disciplinary trajectory of 18th-century thought, emphasizing the pervasiveness of reason. In contrast to the Renaissance concern for maths-based systems, the Enlightenment sought for approaches to accommodate continuous, scientific progress. Descartes and Newton exemplified the former, while the French philosophes represented the latter, as they were responsible for introducing systemic analysis to philosophic thinking. Leibniz bridges this gap, due to his theory of entities (monads) in an ever-becoming status. Lessing, the poet, emerges the author’s final hero for adding to rationalism’s perfunctory analysis an endemic creative power. Deeply exploring concepts across many fields — science, religion, statecraft, psychology, aesthetics — this is a first-rate history of ideas.
16. Himmelfarb, Roads to Modernity (23 Oct 2016)
British thinkers following in the footsteps of Locke and Hume — Berkeley, Hutcheson, Gibbon, Smith joined by Burke and Wesley — were the Enlightenment’s first and foremost cohort, seeking to elaborate social compassion, benevolence, and sympathy. Where the French philosophes concentrated on the ‘ideology of reason’, born of universally applying the systems of Newton and Descartes to society’s structure and pursuits, and the American Founding Fathers on equitable political liberty, the British sought new precepts for a gentler, more virtuous society. These moral philosophers ‘posited a moral sentiment in man as the basis of the social virtues’. Himmelfarb places a major emphasis on Methodism (as an offshoot of the Anglican Church) and Dissent. Burke’s role was to take the British approach further, ‘by making the “sentiments, manners, and moral opinions” of men the basis of society itself, and, ultimately, of the polity as well’.