James Madison is remembered primarily as a systematic political theorist, but this bookish and unassuming man was also a practical politician who strove for balance in an age of revolution. In this biography, Jeff Broadwater focuses on Madison's role in the battle for religious freedom in Virginia, his contributions to the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, his place in the evolution of the party system, his relationship with

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This engaging and sympathetic biography reveals the prolific founding father who Thomas Jefferson described as "the greatest man in the world." We see Madison the legislator, writer, Secretary of State, President, and elder statesman. Perhaps most importantly, we see a man who believed implicitly in the mutual dependence of democracy and individual freedom and whose life was guided by this philosophy. Accordingly, our constitutional guarantees

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This is the first full-length biography, in over a decade, of James Madison, our fourth President and icon of the conservative movement. In it, the author, a historian looks beyond Madison's traditional moniker, "The Father of the Constitution", to find a more complex and realistic portrait of this influential Founding Father. Instead of an idealized portrait of Madison, the author treats readers to the story of a man who often performed his founding...