Songs Beyond Mankind: Poetry and the Lager from Dante to Primo Levi is the eighteenth in a series of publications occasioned by the annual Bernardo Lecture at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CEMERS) at Binghamton University. This series offers public lectures that have been given by distinguished medieval and Renaissance scholars on topics and figures representative of these two important historical, religious, and intellectual periods. Professor Pertile s lecture, Songs Beyond Mankind, asks whether there is a degree of suffering and degradation beyond which a man or woman ceases to be a human being, a point beyond which our soul dies and what survives is pure physiology. And, if yes, to what extent may literature be capable of preserving our humanity in the face of unspeakable pain? These are some of the issues that this lecture addresses by considering two systems of suffering, the hells described by Dante in his "Inferno" and Primo Levi in "Survival in Auschwitz."

A History of American Political Theory is a comprehensive attempt to understand the full sweep of American political thought since the founding. Working within the liberal-progressive tradition, Merriam reviewed American political history in its entirety, from the founding down to his own day. He was not out to reduce political thought to a single element such as economics alone; his aim was to encompass the whole of modem social science. The political science of the liberal-progressive tradition has roots and assumptions that were born in this period and nurtured by scholars such as Merriam. The progressive tradition in general and Merriam in particular interpreted the rise of a new science of politics that would be required for the liberal-progressive world view he represented. His work stands at a momentous fork in the road; two great traditions of how American democracy should be understood, interpreted, and analyzed parted company and afterward each went their separate ways. These traditions are represented, respectively, by the founders and the liberal-progressives. There was much at stake in these academic debates, though the consequences were not entirely foreseen at the time. An overview of the authors, works, and general source material covered in History of American Political Theories is impressive. Merriam viewed the study of American democracy as an eclectic activity embracing the broadest definition of the social sciences, with particular emphasis on psychology. Such a transformation required that the social sciences be grouped as a whole rather than fragmented into separate and distinct academic departments. Charles Merriam (1874-1953) was professor of political science at the University of Chicago. He served on the Research Committee on Social Trends under President Hebert Hoover and on the National Resources Planning Board under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He is known as the father of the behavioral movement in political science and believed that theories of political process needed to be linked to practical political activity. Sidney A. Pearson, Jr. is professor emeritus of political science at Radford University. He is the series editor of Library of Liberal Thought at Transaction Publishers. In addition, he also wrote new introductions for Presidential Leadership, The New Democracy, and Party Government, all available from Transaction.

An intellectual history of American conservativism since the New Deal. The New Deal fundamentally changed the institutions of American constitutional government and, in turn, the relationship of Americans to their government. Johnathan O'Neill's Conservative Thought and American Constitutionalism since the New Deal examines how various types of conservative thinkers responded to this significant turning point in the second half of the twentieth century. O'Neill identifies four fundamental transformations engendered by the New Deal: the rise of the administrative state, the erosion of federalism, the ascendance of the modern presidency, and the development of modern judicial review. He then considers how various schools of conservative thought (traditionalists, neoconservatives, libertarians, Straussians) responded to these major changes in American politics and culture. Conservatives frequently argued among themselves, and their responses to the New Deal ranged from adaptation to condemnation to political mobilization. Ultimately, the New Deal pulled American governance and society permanently leftward. Although some of the New Deal's liberal gains have been eroded, a true conservative counterrevolution was never, O'Neill argues, a realistic possibility. He concludes with a plea for conservative thinkers to seriously reconsider the role of Congress—a body that is relatively ignored by conservative intellectuals in favor of the courts and the presidency—in America's constitutional order. Conservative Thought and American Constitutionalism since the New Deal explores the scope and significance of conservative constitutional analysis amid the broader field of American political thought.

This book details the origins of American progressivism and its enduring effects on American politics and constitutionalism in the twenty-first century.

In the first book-length study of Progressive-Era presidents' views on the theme of self-government, The Dilemma of Progressivism critically analyzes their understanding of executive leadership and the office of the presidency. Will Morrisey examines both the rhetoric and the actions of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson to show the ways in which their thought shaped their presidencies. He shows how the Progressive presidents dealt with the genesis of a modern, centralized American state and the conflicting increase in popularity of the notion of self-government. Drawing larger conclusions about the key American ideas of self-government, federalism, freedom, and social welfare, Morrisey strikes the right balance between political theory and history in this study on self-government and the political thought of three American presidents.

A landmark work on how the Progressive Era redefined the playing field for conservatives and liberals alike. During the 1912 presidential campaign, Progressivism emerged as an alternative to what was then considered an outmoded system of government. A century later, a new generation of conservatives criticizes Progressivism as having abandoned America’s founding values and miring the government in institutional gridlock. In this paradigm-shifting book, renowned contributors examine a broad range of issues, including Progressives’ interpretation of the Constitution, their expansion and redistribution of individual rights, and reforms meant to shift power from political parties to ordinary citizens.

A landmark work of more than one hundred scholars, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution is a unique line-by-line analysis explaining every clause of America's founding charter and its contemporary meaning. In this fully revised second edition, leading scholars in law, history, and public policy offer more than two hundred updated and incisive essays on every clause of the Constitution. From the stirring words of the Preamble to the Twenty-seventh Amendment, you will gain new insights into the ideas that made America, important debates that continue from our Founding, and the Constitution's true meaning for our nation.

Contrary to most academic commentary on The Federalist, this book contends thatthe most significant teachings of the work did not have to do with the institutions of government so much as with the non-institutional features of American constitutionalism, specifically its advocacy for greater union, the development of an unparalleled culture of enterprise, and provision for war. Key to understanding why these features were so critical to The Federalist is the work’s rejection of classical liberalism’s orthodoxy that commercial republics were moderate or pacific in nature rather than spirited, enterprising, and warlike. Using the ancient historian Thucydides account of the daring, innovation, and restlessness of ancient commercial Athens as an interpretive guide for the commercial republican theory that The Federalist embraces, this book provides a sweeping reinterpretation of American constitutionalism. At the heart of The Federalist’s teaching, Peacock contends, is the intention to create an innovative and spirited culture of enterprise that will not only inform America’s civil character post-1787 but its military character as well. No scholarship has considered the significance of Thucydides to the The Federalist. This book does in a comprehensive reconstruction of the work that concludes that The Federalist anticipates as well as any text on American constitutionalism what many consider to be the most definitive features of American character today: its spirit of enterprise and its qualified willingness to engage in war for both reasons of national interest and republican principle.

Calvin Coolidge lived during a time of constitutional transformation – the Progressive Era and World War I – before serving as President of the United States from 1923-1929. Thomas J. Tacoma argues that Coolidge contended with this changing regime and world through as a Burkean conservative and an Americanist politician. In The Political Thought of Calvin Coolidge: Burkean Americanist, Tacoma contextualizes Coolidge’s thought in the Progressive milieu of the age and Coolidge’s own educational background in New England and then presents the core of Coolidge’s political thought: civilization. Tacoma maintains that Coolidge believed in civilization and that the traditional American political and economic order represented the highest achievements in western civilization. Coolidge’s speeches ranged across American history to defend the virtues of the American regime, and in his political career, he undertook to defend the constitutional regime he had inherited. Coolidge, famous for his emphasis on thrift, likewise situated his views on economy within his larger vision of civilization, and he mixed realism and idealism in his developed views on international relations. Through extensive research, Tacoma examines the way Coolidge responded to the challenge of upholding American civilization in the face of a changing world.

The direct primary, in which voters rather than party leaders or convention delegates select party nominees for state and federal offices, was one of the most widely adopted political reforms of the early twentieth century. Yet after decades of practice and study, scholars have found little clear evidence that direct primaries changed the outcomes of party nominations. The conventional wisdom has always been that once the Progressive movement declined and voters became distracted by more pressing issues, parties slowly reasserted their control over candidate selection. This book shows that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Exploring changes in American primary election laws from the 1920s to the 1970s, Robert G. Boatright argues in Reform and Retrenchment that the introduction of the direct primary created far more chaos in American elections than most scholars realize. As he shows, political parties, factions, and reform groups manipulated primary election laws in order to gain an advantage over their opponents, often under the guise of enhancing democracy. Today there is widespread dissatisfaction with primaries, and we are again in a period of experimentation. Boatright looks at how this history can help us understand the reform ideas before us today, ultimately suggesting that, for all of its flaws, there is likely little that can be done to improve primaries, and those who would seek to change American politics are best off exploring reforms to other areas of elections and governance.