This book focuses on the political thought of American statesmen. These statesmen have had consistent and comprehensive views of the good of the country and their actions have been informed by those views. The editors argue that political life in America has been punctuated by three great crises in its history--the crisis of the Founding, the crisis of the House Divided, and the crisis of the Great Depression.

The Second World War was a crisis not just for America but for the whole of Western Civilization and, in the wake of that war, a new crisis arose which came to be called the...