The Essential Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers (Hackett Classics)

Here, in a single volume, is a selection of the classic critiques of the new Constitution penned by such ardent defenders of states' rights and personal liberty as George Mason, Patrick Henry, and Melancton Smith; pro-Constitution writings by James Wilson and Noah Webster; and thirty-three of the best-known and most crucial Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. The texts of the chief constitutional documents of the early Republic are included as well.

David Wootton's illuminating Introduction examines the history of such American principles of government as checks and balances, the separation of powers, representation by election, and judicial independence―including their roots in the largely Scottish, English, and French new science of politics. It also offers suggestions for reading The Federalist, the classic elaboration of these principles written in defense of a new Constitution that sought to apply them to the young Republic.

• Leviathan (Penguin Classics)
• Slave Narratives of the Underground Railroad (Dover Thrift Editions)
• The Essential Writings of Machiavelli (Modern Library Classics)
• Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings (Oxford World's Classics)
• Second Treatise of Government (Hackett Classics)
• Erasmus: The Education of a Christian Prince with the Panegyric for Archduke Philip of Austria (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)
• Democracy in America
• Aristotle's "Politics": Second Edition
• Montesquieu: The Spirit of the Laws (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)
• Leviathan (Penguin Classics)