Some friends and I were recently discussing books in or about American politics and American political history. Occasionally, one of us would admit to not having read some critical book, so one friend asked everyone for their list of 10 or 12 books that constitute canonical literature in American politics. What books make your list?
By the way, to make the list, a book can’t be merely a good book about American politics, it must be an essential book about American politics. Secondary sources only, please – for example, please don’t list the Declaration, or the Constitution, or an important proclamation or legislation. My list includes only nonfiction, but I can imagine a case being made for a work of fiction.
Some outstanding suggestions so far. Of the books already nominated, those that might well make my own top 10 list include:
Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, The Federalist Papers.
Beard, Economic Interpretation of the Constitution.
Myrdal, An American Dilemma.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America.
Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition.
Lippmann, Public Opinion.
Turner, The Sginificance of the Frontier in American History.
Some others that i’d think about adding:
John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (1927), which was really a response to Lippmann. The two books can usefully be read together.
Some more works from the period around the Revolution:[ul]
[li]Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1787).[/li][li]Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776).[/li][li]John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law (1765).[/ul][/li]
For those looking for works with a libertarian bent:[ul]
[li]F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1945).[/li][li]Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962).[/ul][/li]
For those interested in conservative thought:[ul]
[li]Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind (1953)[/li][li]William F. Buckley, Jr., God and Man at Yale (1951)[/li][li]Allam Bloom, The Closing of the Ameircan Mind (1987)[/ul][/li]
For Cold War liberalism:[ul]
[li]Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology[/li][li]Walt W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960)[/ul][/li]An outstanding recent book about postwar thought in America:
S.M. Amadae, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy: The Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism (2003).
The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, by John Micklethwait & Adrian Wooldridge – [url6http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0008EH6LE/sr=1-1/qid=1144763972/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6905602-3394450?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=books]
Very comprehensive and insightful account about gradual the rise of the conservative movement to power from the 1964 Goldwater campaign to the present. The authors are British, giving them a fresh outsider’s perspective.
The Making of the President, 1960, by Theodore White. Informative for the story itself and also for the attitude of the author. It’s classic 50s-style inside journalism.
