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As to Dickinson, see the brief mention in M.E. Bradford’s immortal essay “The Great Convention as Comic Action,” which appears in his _Original Intentions_. I think that Bradford captures Dickinson quite nicely there.

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Jefferson biographies come in every conceivable flavor. If you have a very large appetite, the place to start is Dumas Malone’s six-volume biography. It used to be that Merrill Peterson’s lengthy one-volume treatment won pride of place after Malone’s work, but I find it exceedingly dull — quite a difficult attribute to impart to a study of Thomas Jefferson.

For Jefferson’s presidency, read McDonald’s acerbic take. For a popular approach to Jefferson, there’s Ellis. For the Sally Hemings saga, try Gordon-Reed’s first book. Mayer is excellent on Jefferson and constitutional thought — state and federal. For Jeffersonian political economy, I recommend McCoy’s _The Elusive Republic_. Jeffersonian foreign policy is the subject of the Onufs’ _Federal Union, Modern World_, which I quite like.

A fine book of essays on various questions Jeffersonian is Peter Onuf, ed., _Jeffersonian Legacies_. There you’ll find outstanding chapters on Jefferson and slavery, Jefferson and religion, Jefferson and foreign policy, etc. Still the place to start for Jefferson’s presidency is Henry Adams’s multi-volume book (available in one volume from the Library of America). Adams was a fine prose stylist with an engaged, critical approach (he was John Adams’s great-grandson).

I’m currently working on a volume about the Jefferson-Hamilton rivalry, which will be published in 2014 (if the Good Lord is willing and the creek don’t rise). If you have questions about books covering Jefferson and other topics, just ask. I would note that David Barton’s book on TJ, like most of his oeuvre, is tendentious and unreliable: he starts from his conclusions and then tries to prove them, often by miscasting evidence. Avoid.

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W had a Republican Congress for six of his eight years. He demonstrated no interest in controlling spending; indeed, aversion to reining in government spending is what his slogan “compassionate conservatism” was meant to convey. One should not confuse the Bushes with Reagan: Daddy Bush was the anti-Reagan on every major issue in the 1980 primaries, and he came from the anti-Goldwater wing of the party (as does Romney, by the by).

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You’re welcome.

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Let’s not forget that Wilson also re-segregated the District of Columbia. Many of D.C.’s black residents regard him as the worst of presidents for that reason even today. This initiative was consistent with his imperialist position after the Spanish-American War, when he described the Filipinos as “our subjects” and explained that Western man had a duty to give tutelage to the less advanced peoples — all of which has a certain Kipling (“The White Man’s Burden”) air about it.

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Bessmertnykh did not say that Reagan’s arms buildup was “an accelerator.” He said that SDI led Gorbachev to realize that perestroika was necessary if the USSR was going to compete with the US military; soon enough, Gorbachev saw that perestroika could not succeed without glasnost; and once there was glasnost, people all over Eastern Europe saw that they hated communism. The result was the abolition of the USSR. Again, don’t take my word for it: take Bessmertnykh’s.

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Levinson’s last book was along similar lines. I disliked it. Here is a review I wrote:

http://takimag.com/article/the_u.s._constitution_is_not_democraticand_why_thats_a_good_thing#axzz1waeV789r

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The problem with this line of argument is that interventionists can always cook up a contention that the other country is somehow morally blameworthy. Thus, once you’ve admitted that the US Government can attack any foreign country that fails to adopt the American social/legal template, you’ve admitted it can attack any foreign country, period. That way lies John McCain.

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I’m still disappointed about the ’77 Finals. I have nightmares of Bill Walton making that silly signal over his head. Good thing Mo Malone came along in ’82.

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A slight (and very hopeful) addition to what Dr. J says: while we don’t presently have access to original manuscripts from the classical world, that’s not to say there’s no hope. As I understand it, Julius Caesar’s father-in-law’s villa has yielded abundant ancient manuscripts, and there’s reason to believe many unknown works remain to be unearthed there. As the vast majority of works by all three of the great Greek tragedians, all but one of Aristotle’s collected constitutions, most of the writings of Aristophanes, most of the Athenian orators’ oratory, some of Plato’s dialogues, etc., are now unknown, perhaps great wonders await.

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Another outstanding book in this general area is Robert Wilken’s _The Christians as the Romans Saw Them_. Its topic is the way that pagan intellectuals in the Empire apprehended Christianity. It’s brief and clear, so that both experts and beginners can benefit from it.

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Not only did Augustus end the civil wars, but he brought enormous booty to Rome from Egypt and elsewhere. Who needs republicanism when you can have free goodies? Not for nothing did Tacitus consider his contemporaries degenerate.

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Maybe so, but the mainline Christians certainly didn’t understand things this way. The first Christian historian, Eusebius, for example, wrote an entire _History of the Church_ centered on the idea that the most important thing that ever happened was the conversion of the Emperor Constantine. He explored this idea further in two eulogies of the emperor, who has always been regarded in the eastern Church as a saint. I published an article on this topic in _The Greek Orthodox Theological Review_ about 15 years ago.

As far as Eusebius and his Orthodox successors were concerned, the Church was instituted by God, and St. Constantine’s role was to make Christianity the chief faith of the world — here understood as the Roman Empire. For Eusebius and his contemporaries, the sudden shift from persecuted faith to favored by the emperor could only have been worked by God. It received its astounding validation when Constantine attended the Synod of Nicea and touched the wounds of confessor-saint bishops and monks in attendance. Imagine, an emperor formerly leader of a state religion that worshiped worldly power and beauty supporting the carpenter-God’s Church and embracing its disfigured leaders. This was breath-taking.

You can see the legacy of Eusebius’s understanding in the testament of Vladimir Monomach, for example. The Russian Primary Chronicle is chock-full of stories of rulers embracing and following this model.

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Poor Tom! Here I am in the last year of my first half-century, and he’s “entering middle age.” It must be tough.

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Romney is not alone in finding support for this idea in a peculiar American religious tradition, whether Protestant, Mormon, or some other.

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