America’s Machiavellian Moment [Or, Where Did the Founders Get Their Ideas?]
In this lecture, FPRI’s Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Walter McDougall delves deeply into the origins of the American political tradition by exploring the legacies of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, and the transmission of these ideas across time and space. McDougall is the author of several critically acclaimed books including: The Tragedy of U.S Foreign Policy (2016), Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History 1585 -1828 (2005), Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829-1877 (2008), and Promised Land, Crusader State (1997). One reviewer described McDougall as “a national treasure” while another labeled him “America’s greatest living historian.” He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago and is a veteran of the Vietnam War. He is the founding co-chairman of FPRI’s Butcher History Institute for Teachers.
