The Three Lives of James Madison

Genius, Partisan, President

By: Noah Feldman

Narrated by: John H. Mayer

Length: 34 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

A sweeping reexamination of the Founding Father who transformed the United States in each of his political "lives" - as a revolutionary thinker, as a partisan political strategist, and as a president

Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician, he cofounded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk conflict, becoming the first wartime president and, despite the odds, winning.

In The Three Lives of James Madison, Noah Feldman offers an intriguing portrait of this elusive genius and the constitutional republic he created - and how both evolved to meet unforeseen challenges. Madison hoped to eradicate partisanship yet found himself giving voice to and institutionalizing the political divide. Madison's lifelong loyalty to Thomas Jefferson led to an irrevocable break with George Washington, hero of the American Revolution. Madison closely collaborated with Alexander Hamilton on the Federalist papers - yet their different visions for the United States left them enemies.

Alliances defined Madison, too. The vivacious Dolley Madison used her social and political talents to win her husband new supporters in Washington - and define the diplomatic customs of the capital's society. Madison's relationship with James Monroe, a mixture of friendship and rivalry, shaped his presidency and the outcome of the War of 1812.

We may be more familiar with other Founding Fathers, but the United States today is in many ways Madisonian in nature. Madison predicted that foreign threats would justify the curtailment of civil liberties. He feared economic inequality and the power of financial markets over politics, believing that government by the people demanded resistance to wealth. Madison was the first Founding Father to recognize the importance of public opinion and the first to understand that the media could function as a safeguard to liberty.

The Three Lives of James Madison is an illuminating biography of the man whose creativity and tenacity gave us America's distinctive form of government. His collaborations, struggles, and contradictions define the United States to this day.

©2017 Noah Feldman (P)2017 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"James Madison is famously known as the 'Father' of the American Constitution. With great insight, conveyed in elegant and commanding prose, Noah Feldman gives us a rich portrait of our fourth president in all his many aspects: constitution maker, politician, partisan, friend, slaveholder, husband, president, and elder statesmen. The result is a fresh, bold, and much-needed look at a pivotal figure in American and, therefore, world history." (Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family)

"Noah Feldman brings a scholarly rigor and a gift for narrative to this impressive account of the sprawling - and often perplexing - life of James Madison. Understanding America requires understanding this often-overlooked Founder and his long, eventful life in the arena. We are fortunate indeed that Feldman has given us such a thoughtful examination of Madison's mind and its still-unfolding role in the story of the nation." (Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power)

A must for anyone interested in the US constitution

An excellent analysis of the US constitution and of the thinking of its main author.

I’m glad it wasn’t abridged

A deep dive into a more than worthy topic, which I only wish went deeper.

Not a straight biography

This is a beautifully crafted analysis of Madison’s life by a gifted legal scholar. It is informative, perceptive, and provocative. It is NOT a straight biography. Several important events are omitted or skipped over too quickly, a premier example being (Federalist) President John Adams calling George Washington to lead a national army to confront (Republican-supported) France.

Interesting take on one of the founding fathers.

Definitely a well written and narrated work. Both authors did their homework and I hope to see more of this style of historical reflection geared toward other framers and founders by both of these men.

Based on what was presented, however, and this is just one man's opinion, just because Madison applied his executive authority in a manner that promoted his executive position compared to when he was first constructing the Constitution does not definitively imply that he would have argued the founding document should "evolve" with the time. People evolve, but the founding documents, which were constructed to establish a Union, would have never been agreed upon had the authors conclusion of Madison's been his own. Madison was doing his best, as President, to interpret his understanding of executive authority based on constitutional principles, not actively arguing to undermine it at the end.

Seems to me that the conclusion by the authors of this well-constructed work either deliberately or ignorantly promoted modern progressive ideology in their belief that the Constitution "evolves" with the times. Sure there are ways to modify it, but one must get to the root of the language used at the time in which it was ratified to truly understand it and not conclude that it is "living and breathing" as Wilson and the modern left so do today.

Yikes the details!

If you are looking for a dissection of the early structures of our republic, this is excellent and very detailed.
For this reader the details were mind numbing. That said, many history readers will love this text for its thoroughness.

Fantastic

Loved this book! My only complaint is that it was read too slowly. I listened to it at 1.25x and that was perfect.

A must reading

A must reading to better understand this man and his contribution to our history and our legacy

Great book

I very much enjoyed this book and the insight it gave to a at times forgotten founding father that was perceived as Jefferson’s lacky versus his equal.

Nothing quite so fine as Virginian hypocrisy

Every bio of the Founding Fathers has to deal with the disconnect between the founding principles and the founders' practice. The most obvious example of this is with respect to the slavery question. This disconnect is felt most acutely with the Virginians (Washington, Jefferson, Madison, etc.) while Founders from the Southern colonies weren't as noteworthy/influential in contributions to the founding documents or in their declarations of universal liberty and Northern founders (Adams, Hamilton, Morris, etc.) were more consistently anti-slavery (or at least consistently anti-Virginia-getting-all-the-votes).

There are other areas of disconnect that bios often address including the Federalists' flirtation with pseudo-monarchy (Britain 2.0) and the Virginians' embrace of partisanship. These bios often take one of a few approaches: (1) hagiographic; (2) condemnatory; or (3) neutral.

Feldman's impressive 2017 bio of James Madison is mostly neutral but largely favorable in dealing with Madison's rather....complicated evolution from strict Constitutionalist to fierce partisan to "flexible" Executive. His views on slaves and slavery are mostly presented as willful or negligent blindness which is a slight mark in his favor as compares to Jefferson in that Madison can't really be accused of the hypocrisy that TJ in light of TJ's extreme rhetoric on liberty compared to his actual conduct. Madison was more concerned about the nuts and bolts of a functioning government and how to correct the problems of the Articles of Confederation and Feldman does an outstanding job of taking us through the Constitutional Convention and the lengths to which Madison went to get the bulk of his vision through.

Madison's spirit of compromise and conciliation takes a sharp turn once the Federalists come into power however. It's interesting to watch Feldman largely defend Madison's rather circuitous route from "unity government" to "f*ck the Federalists." I'm surprised that Lord Acton's famous quote about the corrupting influence of power never makes an appearance as the overall sense throughout Feldman's biography is that Madison felt more and more free to abandon what were previously bedrock principles if they interfered with immediate partisan needs.

Given that Jefferson was a friend and mentor of Madison's it is easy to see how this "evolution" came about given Jefferson's own flexible" view of Presidential authority (Jefferson also had a rather liberal view of veracity which didn't rub off quite as much on Madison, thankfully). Regardless, it's interesting to see both the similarities in Jefferson and Madison's approaches to Constitutional interpretation and governance and their differences in how they articulated them. Jefferson was a bomb-thrower while Madison was more measured--which makes "angry Madison" amusing to read.

The other aspects of Feldman's bio are well done, including a very engaging and sympathetic portrait of Dolly Madison. Madison's post-presidential life is given criminally short shrift, however and the book covers the last 20 years of his life almost as an afterthought.

While Feldman does rightfully place Madison in the upper pantheon of founding fathers and looks at his shifting positions regarding Executive vs Legislative vs Judicial authority favorably, he doesn't uniformly praise nor uniformly condemn Madison. The Founders weren't gods (or angels) and Feldman doesn't try to portray Madison as one. He places him within the context of his time and that's what makes this an outstanding and worthwhile history.

Compartmentalizing the Father of the Constitution

While this book will not quite satisfy the reader seeking to dig deep into the character and mind of James Madison, it does present him in his professional life in a compelling and compartmentalized form. Feldman does an excellent job delineating the ever changing approach Madison took to his career in politics. While still holding to his underlying principles, Madison came face-to-face with the realities of executing those principles in an arena that demands compromise.

Overall, this depiction of the Father of the Constitution is presented in a fair and consistent manner. While the bookends of Madison's life are lacking, particularly post-presidency, Feldman pays careful attention to the defining moments in this Founders career. One would expect a detailed analysis of the formation of the Constitution and Feldman accomplishes this quite well. When reaching Madison's presidency, the story tends to widen and include others such as Jefferson and Monroe in such a way that the reader might tend to forget the book is about Madison. This really begins around the foreign policy of Madison in his "second political life" and continues all the way through the War of 1812 near the end of his presidency. At the end of his professional career, Feldman does leave the reader thirsty for more and does not provide much in terms of a proper reflection on the life of such an important figure.

This reader left the book satisfied, yet feeling the pull to look elsewhere to find additional information, if not to the primary sources themselves.