Summer Reading for 2010-2011

You will be reading, at minimum, three books this summer in preparation for next school year. Everyone will read Thomas Paine's Common Sense, but the other two involve some choice.

Choose one:

• Ackerman, Bruce. The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy. New York: Belknap Press, 2005.
• Hamilton, Alexander, James Madison, and John Jay. The Federalist Papers. New York: Penguin Classics, 1987.
• Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Hanover University. http://history.hanover.edu/early/Locke/J-L2-001.html.

Choose one:

• O’Brien, David. Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics, Seventh Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2005.
• Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. New York: Doubleday, 2007.
• Woodward, Bob and Scott Armstrong. The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

The purpose of the readings is to give you a firmer basis in the background of American political science. Not reading the books or merely skimming them only hurts you. I have read them and understand them; you have not and do not. I am not someone who believes in frivolity or inefficiency, so I am not assigning these readings just to assign something. Please take them seriously.

Should you have questions as you read through your books, feel free to email me questions and I will try to answer as quickly as possible.