The Contradictions of James Madison

Every time a biographer of a Founding Father is asked why we need yet another such book, I wish for the question to receive the contempt it deserves. If the universe can bear up under the weight of so many movie remakes of various Peter Parkers being bitten by slightly different radioactive spiders, there’s space enough for a few more good bio­graphies. We need more books about the Founders because we need more books about the Founders. Jay Cost, the Gerald R. Ford fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the co-host of National Review’s Constitutionally Speaking podcast, has written an excellent one on James Madison. New works on the “father of the Constitution” will be timely for as long as American political discourse is inextricable from interpretive discussion of our organic law — in a word, always.