History of American Political Thought - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1498558712 ISBN 13: 9781498558716

Publisher: Lexington Books, 2019

Synopsis

Revised and updated, this long-awaited second edition provides a comprehensive introduction to what the most thoughtful Americans have said about the American experience from the colonial period to the present. The book examines the political thought of the most important American statesmen, activists, and writers across era and ideologies, helping another generation of students, scholars, and citizens to understand more fully the meaning of America.

This new second edition of the book includes chapters on several additional historical figures, including Walt Whitman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Ronald Reagan, as well as a new chapter on Barack Obama, who was not prominent in public life when the first edition was published. Significant revisions and additions have also been made to many of the original chapters, most notably on Antonin Scalia, which now updates his full legacy, increasing the breadth and depth of the collection.

About this title

About the Author

Bryan-Paul Frost is endowed professor of political science at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette.

Jeffrey Sikkenga is professor of political science at Ashland University.

Review

History of American Political Thought is a feast for the mind, a first-rate collection of essays by first-rate scholars. Reaching wide and deep, it brims with insights about the philosophers, poets, novelists. activists, jurists, and political leaders who contributed to the intellectual life of this nation. Rigorous yet readable, this book is bound to become a standard reference about the ideas that undergird American politics. It will be a valuable resource for students and scholars, indeed for anyone with a serious interest in serious political questions. (John J. Pitney Jr., Roy P. Crocker Professor of American Politics, Claremont McKenna College)

Featuring erudite essays of the highest order, this superb collection highlights the richness of the American political tradition, with leading scholars engaging America’s greatest and most important thinkers, jurists, and statesmen. Frost and Sikkenga’s History of American Political Thought is by far the best and most comprehensive volume of its kind, and its updated 2nd edition will no doubt continue to an essential resource for students and researchers. (Patrick Cain, Lakehead University)

This comprehensively encyclopedic set of lively and insightful essays, having become a minor classic over the past fifteen years, is here updated and enlarged in ways that make it an even more essential supplement to all teaching and study of the whole of American political thought. (Thomas L. Pangle, University of Texas at Austin)

This multi authored volume, edited by Frost and Sikkenga, is ‘the best fit’ for how I prefer to approach the study of American political thought in an academic course. In their essays, each author expounds the philosophical orientations and elucidates the main tenets of their notable subject with thoroughly proficient analyses that read much like a high quality narrative. The reader benefits by being shown the important connections between the political ideas of numerous significant figures and the various “isms” that cross the spectrum of political ideology. This new edition gives added value by including extra chapters on the political philosophy of presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. (Troy Goodale, Tusculum University)

This excellent collection has always been the most useful and reliable guide to American political thinkers. Its impressive range has been extended further with new entries on Walt Whitman, LBJ, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. In addition, every chapter of the original edition whose author is still alive has been revised and updated, though all of high quality to begin with. The volume has thus succeeded admirably at rendering its first edition obsolete. What were the visions of America that informed not only the Washingtons and Lincolns but the Elizabeth Cady Stantons and William Graham Sumners? Now you’ll know. (Clifford Orwin, University of Toronto)

Bryan-Paul Frost and Jeffrey Sikkenga are to be congratulated for putting together the most thoughtful, comprehensive, and accessible collection on American political thought ever assembled. This volume is a significant improvement over an already wonderful first edition. One learns what the most serious and gifted American Founders, statesmen, writers, jurists, diplomats, publicists, and citizens have thought about what it means to be an American. Here one confronts unity and diversity and the great debates about liberty and equality, religion and politics, the role of the courts, as well as America's role in the world. A feast for reflective citizens and inquiring scholars alike. (Daniel J. Mahoney, Assumption College)

Edition details

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1498558712
• ISBN 13: 9781498558716
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 968
• Editor: Frost Bryan-Paul, Sikkenga Jeffrey