• The Federalist Papers were written in the winter of 1787-8 with the aim of persuading the citizens of New York to ratify the newly drafted Consitution of the United States; written by three leading players in the events of the American Revolution, these 85 essays together represent the most important work of political thought to have come out of America.
• The arguments set down in The Federalist Papers have continuing relevance for the power-sharing basis between individual states and federal government that operates today.
• This is the first edition to explain all the many classical, mythological, and historical references in the text, and to pay due attention to the learning of the three authors, which enabled them to place the infant American republic in a long tradition of self-governing states.
• The Introduction explains the historical background leading up to the drafting of the Constitution; analyses the psychological and philosophical premises of the authors; and place The Federalist Papers in the history of western political thought.
• Includes a synopsis of the argument developed in the 85 essays; a chronology of events; full bibliography; map of the US in 1776; and the American Constitution in an Appendix.

 
'A nation without a national government is an awful spectacle.'
 
In the winter of 1787-8 a series of eighty-five essays appeared in the New York press; the purpose of the essays was to persuade the citizens of New York State to ratify the Constitution of the United States. The three authors - Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay - were respectively the first Secretary of the Treasury, the fourth President, and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in American history. Each had played a crucial role in the events of the American Revolution; together they were convinced of the need to weld thirteen disparate and newly-independent states into a union. Their essays make the case for a new and united nation, governed under a written Constitution that endures to this day.
 
The Federalist Papers are an indispensable guide to the intentions of the founding fathers who created the United States, and a canonical text in the development of western political thought. This new edition pays full attention to the classical learning of their authors and the historical examples they deploy.