There was intense debate on ratification during the period from the drafting and proposal of the federal Constitution in September 1787 to its ratification in 1789. The principal arguments in favor of ratification were documented by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay in "The Federalist." The arguments against ratification appeared in various forms, by various authors, most of whom used a pseudonym. Collectively, these writings have become known as the Anti-Federalist papers.
"
The Anti-Federalist Writings of the Melancton Smith Circle" makes available for the first time a one-volume collection of Anti-Federalist writings that are commensurate in scope, significance, political brilliance, and depth with those in "The Federalist." Included in this volume as an appendix is a computational and contextual analysis that addresses the question of the authorship of two of the most well-known pseudonymous Anti-Federalist writings, namely, "Essays of a Federal Farmer" and "Essays of Brutus." Also included are the records of Smith's important speeches at the New York Ratifying Convention, some shorter writings of Smith's from the ratification debate, and a set of private letters Smith wrote on constitutional subjects at the time of the ratification struggle.
Michael Zuckert is Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.
Derek A. Webb received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and is currently a student at Georgetown Law School.

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. The contributors write in awareness that a loss of confidence in reason similar to the one we are witnessing today when the desirability and possibility of guiding our lives by the enduring, normative truths that reason attempts to discover had occurred at the time of Socrates, who realized that the existence of genuine limits to what is knowable by reason opened up the possibility that our world, instead of having the kind of intelligible necessities that science seeks to uncover, could be the work of mysterious, creative gods or god as devoutly religious citizens claimed it to be. His grasp of this great difficulty led him and his students ancient and medieval to attempt to ground the life of reason by means of a pre-philosophic, preliminary investigation of political-moral questions. Modern political philosophers later attempted to ground the life of reason in a considerably different, 'enlightening' way. These essays examine both of these attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor. The volume is divided into five parts. The essays in Part I examine the moral-political problems through which Socrates came to ground the philosophic life as those problems first appeared in earlier, pre-Socratic writers. Part II explores those problems in their Platonic and Aristotelian presentations, and in the work of two medieval thinkers. Part III addresses the thought of Leo Strauss, the thinker upon whose work the recovery of both ancient and modern political philosophy in our day has been made possible. Part IV explicates the writings of modern political philosophers and thinkers with a view to uncovering their alternative approach to science and political life. The volume concludes in Part V with essays addressing contemporary problems enlightened by the study of political philosophy.

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. The contributors write in awareness that a loss of confidence in reason similar to the one we are witnessing today when the desirability and possibility of guiding our lives by the enduring, normative truths that reason attempts to discover had occurred at the time of Socrates, who realized that the existence of genuine limits to what is knowable by reason opened up the possibility that our world, instead of having the kind of intelligible necessities that science seeks to uncover, could be the work of mysterious, creative gods or god as devoutly religious citizens claimed it to be. His grasp of this great difficulty led him and his students ancient and medieval to attempt to ground the life of reason by means of a pre-philosophic, preliminary investigation of political-moral questions. Modern political philosophers later attempted to ground the life of reason in a considerably different, "enlightening" way. These essays examine both of these attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor. The volume is divided into five parts. The essays in Part I examine the moral-political problems through which Socrates came to ground the philosophic life as those problems first appeared in earlier, pre-Socratic writers. Part II explores those problems in their Platonic and Aristotelian presentations, and in the work of two medieval thinkers. Part III addresses the thought of Leo Strauss, the thinker upon whose work the recovery of both ancient and modern political philosophy in our day has been made possible. Part IV explicates the writings of modern political philosophers and thinkers with a view to uncovering their alternative approach

There was intense debate on ratification during the period from the drafting and proposal of the federal Constitution in September 1787 to its ratification in 1789. The principal arguments in favor of ratification were documented by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay in "The Federalist." The arguments against ratification appeared in various forms, by various authors, most of whom used a pseudonym. Collectively, these writings have become known as the Anti-Federalist papers.
"
The Anti-Federalist Writings of the Melancton Smith Circle" makes available for the first time a one-volume collection of Anti-Federalist writings that are commensurate in scope, significance, political brilliance, and depth with those in "The Federalist." Included in this volume as an appendix is a computational and contextual analysis that addresses the question of the authorship of two of the most well-known pseudonymous Anti-Federalist writings, namely, "Essays of a Federal Farmer" and "Essays of Brutus." Also included are the records of Smith's important speeches at the New York Ratifying Convention, some shorter writings of Smith's from the ratification debate, and a set of private letters Smith wrote on constitutional subjects at the time of the ratification struggle.
Michael Zuckert is Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame.
Derek A. Webb received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and is currently a student at Georgetown Law School.