At Law & Liberty, Nathan Coleman (University of the Cumberlands — History) reviews (very favorably) Lance Banning's posthumous Founding Visions: The Ideas, Individuals, and Intersections that Created America (Todd Estes, ed., Univ. Press of Kentucky 2014). From the introduction to the review:
In the forward to Founding Visions: The Ideas, Individuals, and Intersections that Created America, Gordon Wood writes that Lance Banning (1942-2006) was “no ordinary historian.” The essays compiled in this volume by Todd Estes, one of Banning’s most able students, makes Wood’s remark abundantly clear. Known for his graciousness and kindness to students and colleagues alike, and for an unassuming and affable nature, Banning epitomized the idea of the gentleman scholar. These essays will remind readers of Banning’s continuing importance to our understanding of the Founding. For undergraduate and graduate students, they are testaments to how the historian’s craft should be practiced.
And from the conclusion:
As Banning’s essays illustrate, had he never published The Jeffersonian Persuasion or Sacred Fire of Liberty he still would have made a sizable and lasting historiographical contribution to how we understand Madison and the Founding. Finally, this collection—and Banning’s entire corpus, really – serves as a potent and timely antidote against an increasingly trivial profession that forces the past to fit modern theoretical constructs. Understanding the intellectual and political world of the Founders, especially as they themselves comprehended it, remains vital to our own appreciation of who we are today. For that reason alone, this volume should be required read
Here is the book description from Amazon:
Lance Banning was one of the most distinguished historians of his generation. His first book, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology, was a groundbreaking study of the ideas and principles that influenced political conflict in the early American Republic. His revisionist masterpiece,The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the Federal Republic, received the Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Banning was assembling this collection of his best and most representative writings on the Founding era when his untimely death stalled the project just short of its completion. Now, thanks to the efforts of editor Todd Estes, this illuminating resource is finally available. Founding Visions showcases the work of a historian who shaped the intellectual debates of his time. Featuring a foreword by Gordon S. Wood, the volume presents Banning's most seminal and insightful essays to a new generation of students, scholars, and general readers.
Posted at 6:29 AM