Founding America: Documents from the Revolution to the Bill of Rights (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) » (Special Value)

Jack N. Rakove is W.  R. Coe Professor of History and American Studies and Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, where he has taught since 1980. He is the author of four books on the American Revolutionary era, including The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress, James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic, and Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, which received the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in History.

Modern American politicians refer to “the founders” so often that they’re in danger of becoming clichés. But Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Abigail and John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, and the other authors included in this new collection were a wholly unique—

Founding America: A Timeline     vii
General Introduction   Jack N. Rakove     xi
Founding America: Documents from the Revolution to the Bill of Rights
The Imperial Dispute     3
First Continental Congress     37
Second Continental Congress     51
"Remember the Ladies"     65
Inventing a Republic     77
Independence     115
Drafting the Articles of Confederation     143
Reforming the Articles of Confederation     169
George Washington     231
Political Reformers     261
The Road to Philadelphia     305
Rival Visions of Union     331
Getting Down to Details     369
The Constitution     395
A More Perfect Union     413
The Case Against the Constitution     433
Publius Replies     477
The Problem of Declaring Rights     545
Proposing Amendments     589
Framing the Bill of Rights     611
For Further Reading     641
List of Sources     643