This important collection reveals that Augustine's political thought drew on and diverged from the classical tradition, contributing to the study of questions at the center of all Western political thought. 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award Winner Studies on Augustine have burgeoned over the past decade, but attention has focused primarily on his writings on philosophy and theology. Less attention has been given to his political teaching, despite his well-known and influential statements on politics, most notably in his City of God. This collection of essays examines Augustine's corpus with a view to understanding his political thought. Taking seriously what he has to say about politics, the contributors here begin with Augustine's own reflections on politics-and often in writings where one least expects to find such reflections, such as the autobiographical Confessions, his letters, and his sermons.The contributors then consider the ways in which Augustine's teaching relates to that of his predecessors, the classical thinkers, as well as to the thought of other medieval thinkers, revealing that Augustine both drew on and diverged from the classical tradition and influenced the political thought of later medieval and even modern thinkers. This important collection thus contributes to the history of political thought and to the study of the questionsat the center of all Western political thought. RICHARD J. DOUGHERTY is professor of politics and chair of the Department of Politics at the University of Dallas.

Ronald J. Pestritto's and Thomas G. West's earlier volume The American Founding and the Social Compact addressed the nature of the thought and philosophy of the men who shaped the American founding. In this second volume in a trilogy, Pestritto and West examine the fate of the founders' principles in the nine teeth century, when these principles faced their first great challenges. Support of slavery, culminating in secession and civil war, came from the South; and after the war came positivism, relativism, and radical egalitarianism, which originated in Europe and infiltrated American universities, where intellectuals repudiated the founders' views as historically obsolete and insufficiently concerned with true human liberation. In ten chapters covering major thinkers in nineteenth-century American political thought, contributors discuss the rise and resolution of ideological conflicts in the early generations of the American republic. In Challenges to the American Founding Pestritto and West have compiled an invaluable resource for the roots of the twentieth-century departure in American politics from the political vision of the American founders.