Most Americans will mark the 250th anniversary of our nation’s independence the same way they celebrate every July 4th — the way John Adams, on the eve of signing the Declaration of Independence, predicted they would — “with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.” But some of our countrymen — gentleman scholars and dorky dads chief among them — will mark America’s semiquincentennial with another time-honored tradition: reading books about America. It would be impossible to list all the books appropriate for the occasion. From great American novels to books about baseball and battleships, even a publishing industry that completely ignores men has enough fodder for patriotic summer reads. That’s why we’re going back to the beginning. Below you’ll find 25 of the best books about the American Founding. They range in subjects from political science and history to biography and more. Some were published during the Revolutionary Era, while others were published to mark America 250. All are engaging, informative, and most importantly, imbued with a patriotism that makes them perfect for readers who not only want to learn more about the republic, but learn how to better love and appreciate it. And so, without further ado, here are 25 books on the American Founding everyone should read.   Political Science Natural Rights Republic, by Michael Zuckert. We’re starting on a high note here with the densest book on the list. Zuckert, a political theorist who spent most of his career at Notre Dame, shows how the Declaration, and thus the entire American Founding, was an effort to build a political society based on, and dedicated to the protection of, natural rights. It’s a heady subject, but Zuckert is not writing for other academics: in clear and engaging prose, he shows how “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is central to our country, and explains what that means for American democracy. The Ideological Origins Of The American Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn. If you begin thumbing through scholarship on the Founding, you’ll quickly learn that lots of people disagree, not just on what the Revolution was for, but how the Founders arrived at independence. In this classic work, Bailyn offers an important concurrence to Zuckert. Yes, the Founders were concerned with rights — but specifically, Bailyn argues, their rights as British citizens. Drawing on 18th-century political pamphlets, Bailyn shows how the revolutionary sentiment spread through the people and sparked a revolution that was truly felt by all, not just thought by the elites. The Radicalism Of The American Revolution, by Gordon Wood. Bailyn’s most famous graduate student, who died this month at 92, won the Pulitzer Prize for History with this 1993 volume. As Daniel Gullotta wrote in his remembrance of Wood for The Daily Wire, in this book “Wood argued that the Revolution was not merely a political break from Britain but the most radical social upheaval in American history. A wholesale dismantling of monarchy, hierarchy, and patronage that set loose the democratic and egalitarian energies that define the nation still.” What The Antifederalists Were For, by Herbert Storing. Cards on the table: if you’re only going to read one book on this list, I think it should be this one. In just 120 pages, Storing brings to life the political position of the often forgotten men who opposed the Constitution, and makes it clear that their objections were substantive, even if they were misguided. In showing the Antifederalists’ concerns about civic virtue, big government, and local custom, Storing not only adds depth to the conventional understanding of the ratification process, but shows the roots of an American political tradition everyone, especially conservatives, embodies to this day. The Basic Symbols Of The American Political Tradition, by Willmore Kendall and George W. Carey. A controversial but important volume, Kendall and Carey argue that the American political tradition is not rooted in lofty philosophy or English common law, but is in fact indigenous to this country and its people. By going back to the pre-Founding foundational texts — the Mayflower Compact, the Virginia Bill of Rights, and more — Carey and Kendall argue that the right to self-government, rather than equality or individual liberty, is central to our republic.   History God Against The Revolution, by Gregg L. Frazer. This book is the perfect volume for those who want to dip their toes in the dark side of the Revolution. We know, of course, that there were Loyalists — Americans who not just opposed the war, but actively supported the crown. But who were they, and why did they avoid being swept up in the tide of revolutionary fervor? This book looks at sermons from loyalist ministers to trace loyalism’s roots, and in so doing sheds light on these forgotten colonials. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier. This might not be the best story of the writing of the Declaration — it’s very good, but there are a lot. This is, however, the best tale of how the Declaration was transmitted across the 13 Colonies and received by its residents. The juxtaposition of the historic moment with the often mundane way the Declaration was disseminated and debated makes for a perfect July 4th read. Especially industrious readers can also pick up Maier’s “Ratification,” where she gives the same treatment to the Constitution. The Ordeal Of Thomas Hutchinson, by Bernard Bailyn. The only author to have volumes in two categories, Bailyn gets his second placement for his telling of the sorry tale of the last royal governor of Massachusetts. Published at the height of protests against Richard Nixon, the ordeal is often seen as Bailyn defending conservative public servants discharging their duty in times of upheaval. But it’s also classic history, a book that will make you feel like you’re there in Massachusetts bay. The Founders At Home, by Myron Magnet. The word “polymath” gets thrown around a lot in discussions of the Founders, and with good reason. For nearly all of them, politics was a second career, and rarely an overriding interest. Magnet here takes us through the interior lives of the founders: their family lives, faith, and other hobbies and interests that kept them busy. An insightful look into the minds of the Founders, and a wonderful portrait of early America. The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777, by Rick Atkinson. Atkinson has a gift for trilogies. His first, which tells the story of America’s liberation of Europe in World War II, has achieved classic status just a decade after it concluded. Atkinson has since turned his attention to the Revolutionary War, and has thus far published two of three volumes (the second, “The Fate Of The Day,” takes us from 1777 to 1780). Start here with this sweeping, engaging story of the war, and perhaps you’ll be caught up by the time Atkinson drops the third and final volume.   Biography Tench Coxe And The Early Republic, by Jacob E. Cooke. Meet the most interesting Founding Father you’ve never heard of. Accused of being a Loyalist during the war, Coxe became an ardent Federalist during the ratification debates, then an unabashed Jeffersonian during the Adams administration. His life reads like an adventure story, but is also like the Founding Era in microcosm. And this is the only book ever written about him available on Amazon — seriously. If you put his name in Amazon, it autocorrects to “trench coat” and brings you to the clothing section. Don’t let them distract you. John Adams, by David McCullough. Look, it’s famous for a reason. No one does biography better than McCullough, and until this book hit shelves even such perceptive minds as Gordon Wood were keen to dismiss Adams as a bloviating hanger-on with little relevance to the American story. Oh how wrong they were. Drawing extensively on letters, diaries, and other primary sources, McCullough shows Adams and his world in full. A great choice for anyone looking to get into American history, or rediscover their love of country. Alexander Hamilton: A Biography, by Forrest McDonald. Long before Ron Chernow and Lin-Manuel Miranda claimed Hamilton for normie liberals, McDonald, a paleoconservative historian who wrote extensively about the Founding period, attempted to stoke interest in Hamilton, whom he correctly understood to be one of the most conservative Founders. At times more political theory than biography, this book is perfect for those who now feel they know the basic sketch of Hamilton’s life but want to better understand his thought and writing. Patriarch: George Washington And The New American Nation, by Richard Norton Smith. One of the more vexing questions about the Founding is: what exactly made George Washington great? It’s easy for us to answer, with 250 years of hindsight: he won the war and led our country through its creation, building a foundation and setting a precedent that allowed it to persist to this day. What’s vexing is that Washington’s contemporaries agreed he was the greatest man to ever live before any of this transpired. Why? I suspect it might be impossible to say — and that, ultimately, Washington is proof that God blessed the American experiment. But Smith comes closer than anyone to answering that question in this intimate, sweeping portrait of our first president. The Constitution’s Penman: Gouverneur Morris and the Creation of America’s Basic Charter, by Dennis Rasmussen. Did you know one man wrote the Preamble to the Constitution, and that scholars agree his notable introduction actually represents an Aristotelian understanding of democracy that helped set our country on the right course? Did you know that man, Gouverneur Morris, was a wealthy philanderer with a peg leg, and that we don’t know how he pronounced his last name? Would you believe me if I said that was just the tip of this incredibly interesting iceberg? Pick up this book to learn more.   Primary Sources Note: while these texts are worth reading on their own, secondary literature can help bring them to life. As such, I have noted specific editions with interpretive essays, and where possible suggested studies to supplement the texts themselves. The Federalist, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Sharing the pseudonym “Publius,” this Founding triumvirate made the case for the Constitution “to the people of the State of New York,” and inadvertently wrote the most essential text for understanding our system of government. In his update of Clinton Rossiter’s definitive volume, Charles R. Kesler brilliantly condenses Publius’s political theory in his introduction, and his comprehensive index allows readers to return to the book again and again. Notes On The State Of Virginia, by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson’s only book is weird as hell. There’s no other way to say it. Part biological and geographical survey of the commonwealth, part digression on race and the cosmos, “Notes” is ultimately a kind of response to The Federalist, a quirky and esoteric distillation of Jeffersonian political thought, which formed the backbone of the first Republican Party and has been in the American mainstream ever since. To really appreciate this unique volume in its totality, read alongside Daniel Klinghard and Dustin Gish’s Thomas Jefferson and the Science of Republican Government: A Political Biography of Notes on the State of Virginia. The Anti-Federalist Writings of the Melancton Smith Circle, edited by Michael Zuckert and Derek A. Webb. If Storing’s volume has piqued your interest in the rogues’ gallery of America’s “Other Founders” and you want to engage more with the Antifederalists themselves, this fascinating volume is a perfect place to start. Smith and his coterie of New York Antifederalists authored the most cogent and convincing arguments against the federal charter, arguments contained in this volume and expertly broken down by Zuckert and Webb. History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, by Mercy Otis Warren. Mercy Otis Warren was a revolutionary writer hailed in her time and forgotten in ours. She wrote prolifically on freedom, limited government, and the promise of democracy. A close correspondent of both John and Abigail Adams, she was pushed into obscurity after the war thanks to her opposition to the Constitution. Her two-volume history of the Revolution is pithy and full of philosophic insights, as well as firsthand commentary on events she lived through. Make sure to snag this edition, with fantastic interpretive notes and essays by Lester Cohen. A Defense Of The Constitutions Of Government Of The United States, by John Adams. IN THIS HOUSE WE TAKE JOHN ADAMS SERIOUSLY AS A POLITICAL THINKER. Dismissed by his more erudite contemporaries and written off by future historians, Adams’s unjustly neglected work situates the various colonial constitutions in the context of the republican tradition stretching back to Ancient Rome. The three-volume work was influential during the Constitutional Convention, and has received renewed attention in recent years as Adams himself has undergone a reconsideration. Best enjoyed alongside C. Bradley Thompson’s John Adams And The Spirit Of Liberty.   Essay Collections John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Founding of America, edited by Michael Zuckert and Lee Ward. This volume won’t hit shelves until August, but I was fortunate enough to receive a review copy and can assure you it’s worth the wait. Many of the authors featured on this list contributed volumes, including Zuckert, who, in addition to editing and contributing the introduction, also coauthored a three-act play on Adams and Jefferson’s late-in-life reunion. Truly one of a kind. The Civitas Collection 250, edited by Richard M. Reinsch II. Another forthcoming volume commemorating the semiquincentennial, this one all about the Declaration of Independence. Edited by noted author Richard Reinsch, and produced by the University of Texas’s Civitas Institute, this volume reveals the thought and action at the center of the Declaration, and makes the case for the document’s continued relevance for our nation and its politics. Notable contributions include John Yoo on executive power, James Patterson on religion and the Founding, and Joshua Dunn on the progressive critique of the Declaration. Thomas Jefferson, The Classical World, And Early America, edited by Peter Onuf and Nicholas Cole. The Founders were pretty obsessed with Ancient Rome, and this volume seeks to explain why. From Washington’s image as a modern-day Cincinnatus to the influence of Roman republicanism on American politics and Jefferson’s push to model America’s aesthetics after those of Rome, these essays are intellectual history at their best. Men Of Little Faith, by Cecilia Kenyon. This volume takes its name from Kenyon’s famous essay on the Antifederalists, which — contra Storing, whose book is a response to Kenyon — argues that the Antifederalists simply didn’t trust the government, their opposition rooted in doubt. The essay is worthwhile even if other scholars (and this author) disagree with her, but the other essays deserve attention too, particularly her takedown of the economic historian Charles Beard and her reconsideration of Alexander Hamilton, whom she calls the “Rousseau of the Right.” As Far As Republican Principles Will Admit, by Martin Diamond. Whether you know it or not, Martin Diamond shaped your view of the American Founding. Faced with an academy that had largely dismissed the Founding as an effort by wealthy, landed slaveowners to protect their property, Diamond dared to take the Founders on their own terms. The glory of the Revolution, the brilliance of separation of powers, the wisdom of the Constitution and Declaration — all ideas Diamond championed, gathered here in the most comprehensive collection of his essays.   BONUS: Lincoln And The Founding This is not the place to recommend books on Abraham Lincoln or the Civil War, two subjects that have likely been written about more than the Founders and the Revolution. But there is a wonderful array of scholarship on how the Founding shaped Lincoln’s political thought, and how Lincoln preserved and advanced the Declaration and Constitution throughout the Civil War. If you’re interested in this, or looking for a Founding-tinged book to give to the Civil War buff in your life, consider the following. No blurbs for these: you’ll just have to trust me. A New Birth Of Freedom, by Harry V. Jaffa His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved The Nation, by Diana Schaub Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment, by Allen C. Guelzo Lincoln And The American Founding, by Lucas Morel Abraham Lincoln: A Constitutional Biography, by George Anastaplo