I wanted to put together a short list of books that have informed how I look at some of the topics related to the American founding. This is not exhaustive, and will change as I read and learn further. Inclusion is not necessarily an endorsement of everything in any given text, or of other things their authors may say, do, or believe.
The Revolution
Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence
Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776
Edmund Morgan, The Birth of the American Republic: 1763 – 1789
Joyce O. Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans
Gordon Wood, Creation of the American Republic: 1776 – 1787
Morgan is probably one of the best concise readers on the period available. There other good summaries out there, but Morgan’s probably the most readable for those who don’t want to spend a tremendous amount of time. I like the Maier texts because she does a good job of explaining what political protest and the text of the Declaration itself actually meant to those who engaged in or with them at the time. Wood is a commitment, but he provides an excellent explanation of what politics in a republic meant to those who lived in the Founding era. Good to read in conversation with Bailyn. Appleby is a little bit different because she focuses more on what life was like for people after the Revolution had moved into the rear view mirror a little bit, and how it differed from life before.
Jeffersonians and Jeffersonianism
Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology
Leonard Levy, Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side
Drew S. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America
Peter Onuf, The Language of American Nationhood
Peter Onuf and Annette Gordon-Reed, “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination
For better or for worse, you cannot understand the Revolution without some understanding of Jefferson’s thought and the beliefs of his closest allies. The Onuf and Gordon-Reed volumes are good look at what a lot of these ideas about the world meant to Jefferson himself. McCoy and Banning also attempt to break down what it actually meant to “be” a Jeffersonian, and what implications that had for government and politics. There’s a very real sense in which American political culture across partisan lines is deeply influenced by Jeffersonian ideology: individualism, faith in untrammeled progress, and a certain exceptionalist notion of exemption from history. All of this you can find in certain adherents of Jeffersonian republicanism at different points, though a lot of that comes from the Jacksonian era as well. Levy is a good tempering text insofar as it throws a little cold water on the idea of Jefferson as a disinterested idealist. He and his party, it turns out, were strongly motivated by their own partisan preferences, and were not averse to using state power when it was to their advantage.
Federalists and Federalism
Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800
Max Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State
Eric Nelson, The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding
The Federalists have always played a somewhat awkward role in American political historiography. Their defeat in 1800 followed by their self-immolation during the War of 1812 has meant that much of American self-understanding – conservative and progressive – has been implicitly Jeffersonian in character. The Federalist understanding of politics – one intensely suspicious of direct popular democracy and more willing to highlight the limitations of human capabilities – has often been viewed as suspect, but it lives on even when it’s in the background. The standard text on this is still Elkins and McKitrick. I will not lie, it is not an easy read. Edling and Nelson are not so much concerned with the Federalists themselves as with particular notions of politics and policy – a strong executive and a robust fiscal-military state – much more in line with Federalist thinking than Republican.
The Constitution
Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution
Leonard Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights
Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution
Beeman is probably the single best text I’ve read dealing with the Convention itself. Levy and Maier are both good reads in terms of sorting through what the Constitution meant to those who debated its ratification at the time.