Liberty's Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World

Liberty's Blueprint: How Madison and Hamilton Wrote the Federalist Papers, Defined the Constitution, and Made Democracy Safe for the World. By Michael I. Meyerson. (New York: Basic, 2008. xvi, 309 pp. $26.95, ISBN 978-0-465-00264.)

This fine book is the fullest and most insightful account we have of the collaboration between Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. In the first part, Michael I. Meyerson explains how Hamilton and Madison conceived and moved toward a new constitution in the 1780s, then took major rotes in the drafting and ratification of the constitution of 1787, and finally became leaders in the establishment of the new government under President George Washington until political differences set them at odds with each other in the early 1790s. Meyerson shows how, in the critical last year of the Revolution, before Yorktown, Hamilton from the battlefield and Madison from the Continental Congress came to similar convictions about the need for a stronger national government. In the summer...