Requiem

Forrest McDonald (1927-2016) was professor of history at the University of Alabama for more than twenty-five years. He is the author or coauthor of fourteen books, including Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in history. Joining him formally as coauthor is his wife and longtime intellectual partner, Ellen Shapiro McDonald. Though she worked with her husband on all of his publications, she chose to only be formally credited as coauthor on this project and as coeditor of Confederation and Constitution, 1781-1789.

"Requiem is vintage Forrest McDonald. Lay readers will discover an active and agile mind addressing a wide range of historical questions and providing answers in a deliberately provocative fashion."--History: Reviews of New Books "Requiem offers a delightfully readable invitation to do battle with great minds of the past--and the present."--North Carolina Historical Review "These essays tackle head-on some highly controversial subjects. They challenge prevailing liberal interpretations of the evolution of the Constitution in a manner guaranteed to promote reflection, cerebration, and even debate. . . . Well-written, well-crafted, strongly argued and with the strong opinions that we have come to expect from McDonald, this book should make an important contribution to our understanding of the making of the Constitution and the age in which it was crafted."--Robert B. Morris, Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus, Columbia University, and author of The Forging of the Union, 1781-1789 "This book is enormously learned, covering a wide range of territory in the intellectual, political, social, and military history of the late eighteenth century. It is also provocative--even pugnacious--both in its championing of the McDonalds' eighteenth-century heroes--John Dickinson and Alexander Hamilton--and in its condemnation of those developments that have caused the American government to stray from the original precepts of its founders."--Richard R. Beeman, editor of Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity