The Federalist Papers Book

With all the talk in political discourse these days about "what the US Founding Fathers intended", I felt it was time to go straight to the source. If you've ever had similar thoughts, this is the place to start. This work is long - around 22 hours of Librivox audio - and written in archaic, ornate English. But anyone reading it will be immediately impressed by its scholarship and depth. It also gives a clear picture of what said Founding Fathers were up against - unbridled, often unprincipled, and outright rude opposition to pretty much every last bit of the Constitution at every turn. This series of essays was painstakingly written to try and convince the country that, while the new Constitution was not and could not be perfect, it was urgently needed to get the Union government functional, and that it was perhaps the best that could be done, given an imperfect world and us imperfect humans. The writers of the new Constitution were clearly trying their utmost to create a government and society as fair, conflict-free and well-functioning as they could manage. Interesting how slaves were reluctantly counted, in a compromise with the South, as having 3/5 the personhood of a free-born man. Really, every American, and anybody interested in how power, justice, and societies work, should read this carefully. It's left me a little tired, but happy and satisfied.