American Political Thought

Fowler interprets the writings of public intellectuals like Robert Bellah, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Michael Walzer, William Bennett, Seymour Martin Lipset, William Galston, and others, as well as survey data of American political attitudes, to spotlight the oft-ignored divide between citizens and high-profile commentators, whose contentious debates are mistakenly assumed to reflect countrywide rifts.

How William Howard Taft melded together his constitutional conservatism and his support for progressive public policies.

A close study of Webster's analysis of three key constitutional issues during the foundational Early Republic era of US history.

The Anti-Federalists may have been the losers in the US Constitution ratification debates, their ideas often dismissed as incoherent or irrelevant, but in fact their arguments took on a life of their own and continue to resonate throughout American history.

The first in-depth investigation, beginning in the American Founding, of the efforts to construct and strengthen political attachments, and uncover lessons about constitutional maintenance for our own time.

Nineteenth-century psychologist and pragmatist philosopher William James is rarely considered a political theorist. This first book by a political theorist devoted exclusively to James's theory argues that political concerns were in fact central to his intellectual work.

Randolph Bourne (1886-1912) was an essayist and critic most remembered today for his opposition to U.S. military involvement in Europe and his assertion that “war is the health of the state.” In reexamining Bourne’s writings, Vaughan has located the roots of twentieth-century radical thought while repositioning Bourne at the center of debates about the nature and limits of American liberalism.