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What Would the Founders Do? Our Questions, Their Answers, by Richard Brookhiser (Basic, 261 pp., $26)

FEW countries have a governing tradition that merits a cult of the creators. In the two centuries since the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, France, Germany, and Russia have undergone revolutions, and each has witnessed the rise and fall of a number of regimes-most of them failures. America’s revolutionaries, by contrast, succeeded, and did so in such arresting fashion that we reflexively look back to them as to an oracle. What can they tell us, Richard Brookhiser asks in his new book, about the questions that perplex us today?

About the Author

Michael Knox Beran

Michael Knox Beran, a lawyer and writer, is the author of WASPs: The Splendors and Miseries of an American Aristocracy.

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Constitutional Government

History

What Would the Founders Do? Our Questions, Their Answers, by Richard Brookhiser (Basic, 261 pp., $26)

FEW countries have a governing tradition that merits a cult of the creators. In the two centuries since the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, France, Germany, and Russia have undergone revolutions, and each has witnessed the rise and fall of a number of regimes-most of them failures. America’s revolutionaries, by contrast, succeeded, and did so in such arresting fashion that we reflexively look back to them as to an oracle. What can they tell us, Richard Brookhiser asks in his new book, about the questions that perplex us today?