James Wilson is an unjustly neglected Founder. As Michael Taylor says, his career did not have the drama of Franklin, Washington, or Hamilton, or the undramatic longevity of Madison. He died of a stroke while on the run from his creditors. Only scholars who have closely studied the 1787 Constitutional Convention have realized Wilson’s importance as a direct link from the Scottish to the American Enlightenment.

Iain McLean, Nuffield College

This innovative biography concentrates on James Wilson’s thoughts on the U.S. Presidency, Senate, and citizenship qualifications. Ranked among the most important political theorists of the Founding Era, Wilson’s ideas are compared by Professor Taylor with several other foreign-born and foreign-educated Americans. Although Wilson argued that the Constitution of 1787 was limited to enumerated powers, his 1785 arguments espousing implied national powers were revived over a century later by President Theodore Roosevelt and served as the foundation for the concept of a living Constitution promoted during and after the Progressive Era.

John P. Kaminski, University of Wisconsin-Madison

James Wilson is one of the “forgotten” Founders: a signatory of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution who has been surprisingly overlooked in many of the standard histories of the American Revolution. Michael Taylor’s excellent new book, much of it based on original research, paints an engaging portrait of this major figure in American life, and a highly readable introduction to his contributions to the founding of the American Republic.

William Ewald, University of Pennsylvania