Madison book

Current reading: James Madison, by Richard Brookhiser. I can recommend it even without having read the whole thing. I've focused mostly on the second half, with a particular eye toward the flexibility that even strict constructionists showed in putting the Constitution into practice. Madison, for instance, acceded to a Bank of the United States after it had existed for a couple of decades, partly on the grounds that this duration established it as valid. Incidentally, I'm working on some 18th-century-related writing of my own.