James D. R. Philips

“Two Revolutions and the Constitution” describes how the American Constitution secured the gains of the American Revolution. It tells the story of how the American constitutional system drew on both Americans' experience of partial self-government in colonial America and their understanding of the British constitution. It also tells how, when they were drafting the Constitution, the Framers used what they had learned about effective constitutions since independence. The English Revolution and the American Revolution were both part of a great struggle between a new modern society, and the political relics of the medieval world. This audiobook describes how the English started that struggle, and the American Constitution completed it.

“Two Revolutions and the Constitution demonstrates that the American constitutional system – federalism, checks and balances, etc. – drew on the colonists’ understanding of British laws and government, although the final product grew from what the Founders felt they had learned about effective governance in the course of the American Revolution and the desperate War of Independence. This important book teaches about the building blocks of history. It demonstrates how ideas spring from experience and events, and from what historical actors concluded were earlier mistakes, in this instance the presumed flaws in the first state and national constitutions.”

— John Ferling, author of “Winning Independence: The Decisive Years of the Revolutionary War, 1778-1781 (2021)”

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