BOOKS
The Lost Founder
New York Times journalist Jesse Wegman tells the story of James Wilson, a Founding Father whose bold vision shaped American democracy but whose legacy was lost to scandal.
As a young lawyer, James Wilson made a celebrated case for American independence in an essay that inspired the famous words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” He wrote the first draft of the Constitution and, along with the more famous James Madison, played perhaps the essential role in its ultimate creation.
Wilson believed that the people are the ultimate source of all power. He argued successfully for a strong central government and a powerful presidency, and fought unsuccessfully for a direct vote for the President and the Senate. Appointed as a justice to the first Supreme Court, he was later brought down by reckless land speculation and died of malaria in the back room of a North Carolina tavern while hiding from his creditors.
Instead of being remembered as one of the nation’s great political thinkers, Wilson was virtually written out of history. But in The Lost Founder, Wegman brings to life the most prescient of the earliest patriots and makes a convincing argument that scandal should not diminish the life and impact of a brilliant, complicated man whose vision for his country could not be more relevant today.
“With insight and eloquence, Jesse Wegman has done heroic work in bringing a vital but obscure architect of America back into the popular conversation. As Wegman amply proves, James Wilson merits our reconsideration—and our gratitude.”
—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer
“I like to think James Madison would be miffed that James Wilson has finally gotten his due as a major framer of the U.S. Constitution. Jesse Wegman’s spellbinding and erudite biography, revealing Wilson’s crucial and often cantankerous role as America’s most democratic founder, could not arrive at a better time.”
—Jill Lepore, author of We the People and These Truths
“Jesse Wegman has written a gripping and deeply researched work of American history. Scottish immigrant, signer of both the Declaration and the Constitution, and the man who coined ‘We the People,’ James Wilson believed that power resided in the people themselves, foreseeing a democratic future the country is still struggling to achieve. That he died broke and largely forgotten, his headstone bearing the wrong date of his death, is one of American history’s more painful ironies. The Lost Founder restores Wilson to his rightful place and challenges us to reconsider what popular sovereignty really means.”
—Ken Burns, award-winning documentary filmmaker and director of PBS’ The American Revolution
Let the People Pick the President
The framers of the Constitution battled over it. Lawmakers have tried to amend or abolish it more than 700 times. To this day, millions of voters, and even members of Congress, misunderstand how it works. It deepens our national divide and distorts the core democratic principles of political equality and majority rule. How can we tolerate the Electoral College when every vote does not count the same, and the candidate who gets the most votes can lose?
Now, with political passions at a boiling point, the message from the American people is clear: The way we vote for the only official whose job it is to represent all Americans is neither fair nor just. Major reform is needed—now. Isn’t it time to let the people pick the president?
In this thoroughly researched and engaging call to arms, Supreme Court journalist and New York Times editorial board member Jesse Wegman draws upon the history of the founding era, as well as information gleaned from campaign managers, field directors, and other officials from twenty-first-century Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns, to make a powerful case for abolishing the antiquated and antidemocratic Electoral College. In Let the People Pick the President he shows how we can at long last make every vote in the United States count—and restore belief in our democratic system.
“Was it a mistake to create the Electoral College? Jesse Wegman argues that it was. This timely and erudite work should interest all who are interested in the future of the United States.”
—Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello
“Jesse Wegman’s urgent and ultimately irrefutable call to action is the most readable and fully informed explanation of how the Electoral College is wrecking America’s great experiment in government of, by, and for the people. It’s not too late to rescue our democracy from destruction. But it soon will be. Wegman makes a compelling case that we must act now—and he explains what to do.”
—Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard Law School
“Jesse Wegman is a shrewd analyst, brilliant researcher and passionate writer, and here he tackles an issue important to our system’s legitimacy.”
—Nicholas Kristof
“People have been arguing against the Electoral College from the beginning. But no one, at least in recent years, has laid out the case as comprehensively and as readably as Jesse Wegman does in Let the People Pick the President.”
—Josh Chafetz, New York Times Book Review
“Wegman combines in-depth historical analysis and insight into contemporary politics to present a cogent argument that the Electoral College violates America’s ‘core democratic principles’ and should be done away with… this urgent and lucidly presented plea for change will resonate with progressives.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A methodical, well-reasoned compilation of arguments on a pertinent subject; recommended for readers interested in historical and contemporary U.S. politics.”
—Library Journal
“Throughout, the author’s confidence in his argument shines through… An illuminating history and analysis.”
—Kirkus Reviews
