It has become a holiday tradition on the OUPblog to ask our favorite people about their favorite books. This year we asked authors to participate (OUP authors and non-OUP authors). For the next two weeks we will be posting their responses which reflect a wide variety of tastes and interests, in fiction, non-fiction and children’s books. Check back daily for new books to add to your 2010 reading lists. If that isn’t enough to keep you busy next year check out all the great books we have discovered during past holiday seasons: 2006, 2007, 2008 (US), and 2008 (UK).
Edward A. Zelinsky is the Morris and Annie Trachman Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. He is the author of The Origins of the Ownership Society: How The Defined Contribution Paradigm Changed America.
For my twelfth birthday, my mother bought me a copy of The Federalist Papers. I still remember the imposing cover of this paperback book, with the bewigged James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton solemnly staring at the reader. On this first reading, I didn’t understand much of their arguments, but I suspect that wasn’t my mother’s point. Unfortunately, I never asked her.
My next confrontation with The Federalist Papers was in college when a professor assigned the entire book – no excerpts, no commentary, no background – just the book. It was the sixties and Madison, Jay and Hamilton epitomized what were soon to be derided as the Dead White Males. After reading it from cover-to-cover, I told my professor that their ideas, such as checks-and-balances and separation of powers, were commonplace. My professor just smiled enigmatically.
I belatedly realized his point: These thoughts are part of our common culture today largely because these three Dead White Males made them so.
When I next confronted The Federalist Papers in law school, my earlier skepticism had given way to grudging admiration. By then, it was clear that Madison, Jay and Hamilton were livelier fellows than their solemn portraits made them out to be. Madison was a nerd who somehow convinced the hottest eligible lady in town to marry him. Hamilton was the classic poor boy who started in life with less than nothing and wound up in the nation’s highest precincts. After Jay negotiated his eponymous treaty, he was strung in effigy throughout the nation. These fellows had interesting lives.
Finally, as a law professor, I realized the importance of The Federalist Papers: In the rush of current events, Madison, Hamilton and Jay got most of the big issues right and set the framework for much of the American political discourse which has followed over the generations. Of course, the Constitution has been amended in ways which make moot many of their arguments. We now have a Bill of Rights. The Fourteenth Amendment radically changes the relationship between the states and the federal government. Nevertheless, in many imp