Books on Politics

Politics

Aristotle · 330 BC — constitutions, citizenship, and the ideal state drawn from over a hundred Greek city-states.

Greek

On Duties

Cicero · 44 BC — a father's letter to his son on justice, generosity, and why nothing wrong can ever truly be advantageous.

Roman

The Prince

Niccolo Machiavelli · 1513 AD — whether it is better for a ruler to be feared or loved.

Utopia

Thomas More · 1516 AD — Raphael Hythloday's account of an island with no money and no private property.

Allegory

The Obedience of a Christian Man

William Tyndale · 1528 AD — Scripture's authority over the pope and the ruler's authority over earthly affairs.

The Lesser Magistrates

John Knox · 1558 AD — the case for lawful resistance to tyrannical rulers.

The True Law of Free Monarchies

James VI/I · 1598 AD — a reigning king's case that monarchs answer to God alone and that subjects may never lawfully rebel.

A Model of Christian Charity

John Winthrop · 1630 AD — the shipboard sermon envisioning the Massachusetts Bay colony as a city upon a hill.

Missions

Patriarcha: The Natural Power of Kings

Robert Filmer · 1635 AD — the defense of absolute monarchy that provoked Locke's case for democracy.

Areopagitica

John Milton · 1644 AD — a speech to Parliament defending the freedom to read, print, and judge for oneself.

Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes · 1651 AD — Hobbes on human nature, the state of nature, and the social contract.

The Christian Commonwealth

John Eliot · 1651 AD — a vision of civil government derived entirely from Scripture, by the Apostle to the Indians.

Ministry · Missions

Second Treatise of Government

John Locke · 1689 AD — the argument that government rests on consent and tyrants may be overthrown.

Politics Drawn from Holy Scripture

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet · 1709 AD — a royal tutor's case for sacred, paternal, absolute monarchy, proved proposition by proposition from the Bible.

Common Sense

Thomas Paine · 1776 AD — the pamphlet arguing for American independence from Britain.

Federalist Papers

Alexander Hamilton · 1787 AD — eighty-five essays by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay defending the proposed Constitution.

The U.S. Constitution & Bill of Rights

Founding Fathers · 1787 AD — the framework of American government and the rights it guarantees citizens.

Reflections on the French Revolution

Edmund Burke · 1790 AD — a letter defending tradition and gradual reform against the French Revolution's ideology.

Considerations on France

Joseph de Maistre · 1796 AD — the French Revolution read as divine punishment and providential instrument.

Washington’s Farewell Address

George Washington · 1796 AD — Washington's parting counsel against political faction and for national unity.

The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions

Joseph de Maistre · 1814 AD — constitutions grow from a nation's history and character, never from pure reason.

Signs of the Times

Thomas Carlyle · 1829 AD — an essay naming the era the Mechanical Age, run by machinery instead of conviction.

Democracy in America: Volume 1

Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835 AD — the institutional half of Tocqueville's study, from the township to the Constitution.

Messiah the Prince

William Symington · 1839 AD — Symington on the nature, scope, and duration of Christ's mediatorial kingship.

Christ

Democracy in America: Volume 2

Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840 AD — the political half, including the chapter on the tyranny of the majority.

Unbelief and Revolution

Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer · 1847 AD — fifteen lectures tracing the French Revolution to the rejection of God's law.

The Law

Frédéric Bastiat · 1850 AD — law as organized self-defense, and why redistribution is legal plunder.

On Liberty

John Stuart Mill · 1859 AD — the harm principle: society may restrain a person only to prevent harm to others.