If the First Amendment protects the separation of church and state, why have atheists had to fight for their rights? In this valuable work, R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick reveal the fascinating history of atheism in America and the legal challenges to federal and state laws that made atheists second-class citizens.

‘When my country … was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir’

Published anonymously in 1776, six months before the Declaration of Independence, Paine’s Common Sense was a radical and impassioned call for America to free itself from British rule and set up an independent republican government. Savagely attacking hereditary kingship and aristocratic institutions, Paine urged a new beginning for his adopted country in which personal freedom and social equality would be upheld and economic and cultural progress encouraged.  His pamphlet was the first to speak directly to a mass audience – it went through fifty-six editions within a year of publication – and its assertive and often caustic style both embodied the democratic spirit he advocated, and converted thousands of citizens to the cause of American independence.

Isaac Kramnick’s introduction examines Paine’s life and work within the context of the political and social changes taking place in Europe and America in the late eighteenth century.

‘The establishment of a Constitution, in a time of profound peace, by the voluntary consent of a whole people, is a PRODIGY’

Written at a time when furious arguments were raging about the best way to govern America, The Federalist Papers had the immediate pratical aim of persuading New Yorkers to accept the newly drafted Constitution in 1787. In this they were supremely successful, but their influence also transcended contemporary debate to win them a lasting place in discussions of American political theory. Acclaimed by Thomas Jefferson as ‘the best commentary on the principles of government which ever was written’, The Federalist Papers make a powerful case for power-sharing between State and Federal authorities and for a Constitution that has endured largely unchanged for two hundred years.

In a brilliantly detailed introduction Isaac Kramnick sets the Papers in their historical and political context. This edition also contains the American Constitution as an appendix.

‘A new political science is needed for a totally new world’

In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and ambitious civil servant, made a nine-month journey throughout America. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the strengths and weaknesses of the nation’s evolving politics and institutions. Tocqueville looked to the flourishing democratic system in America as a possible model for post-revolutionary France, believing that the egalitarian ideals it enshrined reflected the spirit of the age and even that they were the will of God. His insightful work has become one of the most influential political texts ever written on America and an indispensable authority for anyone interested in the future of democracy. This volume includes the rarely translated Two Weeks in the Wilderness, an evocative account of Tocqueville’s travels in Michigan among the Iroquois and Chippeway, and The Excursion to Lake Onéida.

This is the only edition that contains all Tocqueville’s writings on America, and includes a chronology, further reading and explanatory notes. Gerald Bevan’s translation is accompanied by an introduction by Isaac Kramnick, which discusses Tocqueville’s life and times, and the enduring significance of Democracy in America.

In their history of Cornell since 1940, Glenn C. Altschuler and Isaac Kramnick examine the institution in the context of the emergence of the modern research university. The book examines Cornell during the Cold War, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, antiapartheid protests, the ups and downs of varsity athletics, the women's movement, the opening of relations with China, and the creation of Cornell NYC Tech. It relates profound, fascinating, and little-known incidents involving the faculty, administration, and student life, connecting them to the "Cornell idea" of freedom and responsibility. The authors had access to all existing papers of the presidents of Cornell, which deeply informs their respectful but unvarnished portrait of the university.

Institutions, like individuals, develop narratives about themselves. Cornell constructed its sense of self, of how it was special and different, on the eve of World War II, when America defended democracy from fascist dictatorship. Cornell s fifth president, Edmund Ezra Day, and Carl Becker, its preeminent historian, discerned what they called a Cornell soul, a Cornell character, a Cornell personality, a Cornell tradition and they called it freedom.

The Cornell idea was tested and contested in Cornell s second seventy-five years. Cornellians used the ideals of freedom and responsibility as weapons for change and justifications for retaining the status quo; to protect academic freedom and to rein in radical professors; to end in loco parentis and parietal rules, to preempt panty raids, pornography, and pot parties, and to reintroduce regulations to protect and promote the physical and emotional well-being of students; to add nanofabrication, entrepreneurship, and genomics to the curriculum and to require language courses, freshmen writing, and physical education. In the name of freedom (and responsibility), black students occupied Willard Straight Hall, the anti Vietnam War SDS took over the Engineering Library, proponents of divestment from South Africa built campus shantytowns, and Latinos seized Day Hall. In the name of responsibility (and freedom), the university reclaimed them.

The history of Cornell since World War II, Altschuler and Kramnick believe, is in large part a set of variations on the narrative of freedom and its partner, responsibility, the obligation to others and to one s self to do what is right and useful, with a principled commitment to the Cornell community and to the world outside the Eddy Street gate."

God occupies our nation's consciousness, even defining to many what it means to be American. Nonbelievers have often had second-class legal status and have had to fight for their rights as citizens. As R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick demonstrate in their sharp and convincing work, avowed atheists were derided since the founding of the nation. Even Thomas Paine fell into disfavor and his role as a patriot forgotten. Popular Republican Robert Ingersoll could not be elected in the nineteenth century due to his atheism, and the suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton was shunned when she questioned biblical precepts about women's roles. Moore and Kramnick lay out this fascinating history and the legal cases that have questioned religious supremacy. It took until 1961 for the Supreme Court to ban religious tests for state officials, despite Article 6 of the Constitution. Still, every one of the fifty states continues to have God in its constitution. The authors discuss these cases and more current ones, such as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., which address whether personal religious beliefs supersede secular ones. In Godless Citizens in a Godly Republic, the authors also explore the dramatic rise of an "atheist awakening" and the role of organizations intent on holding the country to the secular principles it was founded upon.

The Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, also called the Age of Reason, was so named for an intellectual movement that shook the foundations of Western civilization. In championing radical ideas such as individual liberty and an empirical appraisal of the universe through rational inquiry and natural experience, Enlightenment philosophers in Europe and America planted the seeds for modern liberalism, cultural humanism, science and technology, and laissez-faire Capitalism This volume brings together works from this era, with more than 100 selections from a range of sources. It includes examples by Kant, Diderot, Voltaire, Newton, Rousseau, Locke, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Paine that demonstrate the pervasive impact of Enlightenment views on philosophy and epistemology as well as on political, social, and economic institutions.

"Behind this study lie two questions. Why is Bolingbroke, known primarily as a rationalist philosopher of the Enlightenment, so worshipped by English conservatives who are themselves, since Burke, so set against what the Enlightenment represents in political, social, and religious thought? The second question relates to Bolingbroke's public life. How does one explain the intense animosity between Bolingbroke and Walpole which provides the energy for English political life between 1725 and 1740? Is it mere vindictiveness, ambition, jealousy, or the inevitable reflex of the 'outsider' against the 'insider'? Or is it, as the late Victorian writers thought, their falling out at Eton which forever fated them to be protagonists?"—from the Preface.

This collection focuses on Paine as the political theorist who was an inspiration to Americans in their struggle for independence, a great defender of individual rights, and the most incendiary of radical writers.

"The Godless Constitution" is a ringing rebuke to the religious right's attempts, fueled by misguided and inaccurate interpretations of American history, to dismantle the wall between church and state erected by the country's founders. The authors, both distinguished scholars, revisit the historical roots of American religious freedom, paying particular attention to such figures as John Locke, Roger Williams, and especially Thomas Jefferson, and examine the controversies, up to the present day, over the proper place of religion in our political life. With a new chapter that explores the role of religion in the public life of George W. Bush's America, "The Godless Constitution" offers a bracing return to the first principles of American governance.