While waiting for Gordon S. Wood’s presentation at the 2010 National Book Festival, we caught up with Hadley Nagel, the founder and National Director of Americans for Madison and a Hodson Trust Scholar at Johns Hopkins University, to talk about her work as contributing editor to a new history book titled James Madison & The Birth Of The U.S. Constitution (Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History; September, 2010), filled with photos, letters, diary entries, and portraits commemorating the historic role played by James Madison in writing the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and as the fourth President of the United States (1809-1817). Describing the book as an educational tool for teachers, Nagel reviewed the Gilder Lehrman Institute’s publishing program and the Institute’s relationship to the New York Historical Society in closing. Moving to the giant History tent, with an introduction by Washington Post editor Rachel Hartigan Shea, Pulitzer Prize winning historian and professor at Brown University, Gordon S. Wood, who coincidentally is also a member of the Americans for Madison Advisory Board founded by Hadley Nagel, took the stage on the National Mall at the 2010 National Book Festival. Presenting his newest book, Empire of Liberty (Oxford University Press; September, 2009), Wood scanned the revolutionary American landscape and portrayed the early Americansocial, religious and political issues as a state of flux often driven by illusions and popular trends. Wood closed his presentation by taking questions from the audience on post-revolution U.S. and U.K. relations, which took about 100 years to solidify; early relations between the U.S. and France, which did not take long at all to fray; the populist politics of the ‘clodhoppers’; the role of evangelicals and U.S. support for every revolution in the world (except Haiti’s) in early U.S. history; the controversies surrounding Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase; the rise of partisan politics and the establishment ofpolitical parties in early U.S. history; and President Andrew Jackson’s tilt toward ‘elected monarchy’.
Hadley Nagel Presents ‘James Madison & The Birth Of The U.S. Constitution’ [PubBuzz – The Author Video News Network – Interviews, Readings, Book Reports and Book Fairs]http://pubbuzz.com/index.cfm?module=movie&mID=3213
Hadley Nagel Recalls The Historic Role Of James Madison [PubBuzz – The Author Video News Network – Interviews, Readings, Book Reports and Book Fairs]http://pubbuzz.com/index.cfm?module=movie&mID=3212
Hadley Nagel Reviews Gilder Lehrman Publishing Program And Relationship With New York Historical Soc [PubBuzz – The Author Video News Network – Interviews, Readings, Book Reports and Book Fairs]http://pubbuzz.com/index.cfm?module=movie&mID=3211