The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic

Co-winner of the 1997 Merle Curti Award in American Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians

"Brilliant and original. . . . The Sacred Fire of Liberty is a challenging book, bristling with ideas and filled with fine shades of emphasis and meaning. Yet there is . . . no jargon or academic obfuscation, and the attentive reader should have no trouble following the argument."--Evan Cornog, New York Times Book Review

"No one who has followed Banning's account of Madison's development . . . will read The Federalist or plot the trajectory of his career in quite the same way again. This is no small achievement."--Edmund S. Morgan, The New Republic

"Well researched and eloquently rendered. . . . An essential addition to the scholarship on the New Republic."--Library Journal