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Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions (American Political Thought)

by Alan Gibson (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars 2 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0700615193
ISBN-10: 0700615199
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Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions, 2nd Edition (American Political Thought)
Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions, 2nd Edition (American Political Thought)
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  1. Interpreting the Founding: Guide to the Enduring Debates over the Origins and Foundations of the American Republic Second Edition, Revised and ... Thought (University Press of Kansas))
    Alan Gibson
    5.0 out of 5 stars 3
    Hardcover
    $35.00 Prime
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Product Details

  • Series: American Political Thought
  • Hardcover: 332 pages
  • Publisher: University Press Of Kansas (April 27, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0700615199
  • ISBN-13: 978-0700615193
  • Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,554,332 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 starsA very fine summation of the current knowledge.
By greg taylor VINE VOICE on May 20, 2007
Format: Hardcover
This slender and very concise (194 pages of text, 75+ pages of notes) is a follow-up to Prof. Gibson's fine first book, Interpreting the Founding. In that volume (see my review), Gibson outlined the historigraphical debates about the founding American period (which I define as late 1760s to 1800).
In this book, he goes more to the heart of the subject itself. Gibson's project in these two books is two-fold: What is the best analytical framework to use in examining the founding generation? What can we say that we now know of them after the last fifty years of (often brilliant) historical work? Another way to state this is to say that his project is to point out future directions for research to answer the questions that past work has defined.
Before I discuss his work, I want to baldly state his main conclusion:
Gibson believes that the founders were deontological liberals. They believed that the protection of rights was the central role of government.
They did not believe that government should try to change or form the character of the people.
He centers his discussion around four basic questions or debates. Each of these controversies is covered in his chapters 1 thru 4.
The first is the validity of Beard's thesis of the economic interpretation of the Constitution. In many ways this is the least interesting chapter simply because the necessary data is so incomplete or so seems to point every which way. Let me give you one of my own examples of the latter. Gibson discusses Robert McGuire's fine statistical work on what we know about the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Gibson states that "McGuire's most important claim...is his proposition that slave-holding made a delegate much less likely to favor a national negative on state laws..."(p. 40).Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsWhat Historians have to say about the Founding
By Carol Crystle on January 6, 2014
Format: Paperback
This book does not set out to tell the story of the founding itself, but rather devotes successive chapters to historians' interpretations of what the founding was "really" about. The author, a professor of history, is an obvious master of the material, which, despite its scholarly and sometimes rarified nature, he presents in a clear readable fashion. Of particular interest is the chapter on the debate started by Charles Beard on an economic interpretation of the founders' motives in writing the Constitution. Although Beard's views were refuted by historical facts back in the 1950s, many who attended college in those years and after are still in thrall to his understanding of what the Constitution was about. Gibson sums up what the latest scholarship supports about an economic interpretation of our founding document. He concludes with a valuable chapter on the misuse of the constitution in understanding current political problems. He points out that the source of those problems can be found in specific developments in the past 20 years, and blaming the Constitution can actually hinder efforts to understand and solve them.
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