Reviewed by Gary McDowell | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.4

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Reviewed by Gary McDowell | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.4 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Constitutional Dialogues

Men of Little Faith: Selected Writings of Cecelia Kenyon. Edited by Stanley Elkins, Eric McKitrick , and Leo Weinstein . (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. Pp. vi, 287. $34.95.)

Ratifying the Republic: Antifederalists and Federalists in Constitutional Time. By David J. Siemers. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002. Pp. xx, 292. $55.00 cloth; $24.95 paper.)

Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State. By Daniel L. Dreisbach . (New York: New York University Press, 2002. Pp. x, 282. $50.00 cloth; $19.00 paper.)

Reviewed by Gary McDowell , University of Richmond

Occasionally in publishing there comes along an idea so good that one cannot imagine that it has not been done before. Such is the case with the selected essays and reviews of Cecelia M. Kenyon (1922–1990). Lovingly gathered and introduced by Stanley Elkins and the late Eric McKitrick in the fulfillment of a plan originally conceived by the late Leo Weinstein, long Kenyon's colleague in the government department at Smith College, this drawing together of some of her most important writings is nothing less than a service to scholarship.

Elkins and McKitrick provide a most helpful guide to Kenyon's work in an introductory essay orchestrated around the fact that her contributions have been taken too much for granted. Their essay, "Originality Underestimated: The Political and Historical Writings of Cecelia Kenyon," handily makes the case for her enduring importance, not least her willingness to clear out the "underbrush" of historiography after the Second World War. Most significant, of course, was her effort to diminish the extraordinary influence of Charles Beard's theory of economic determinism in explaining the American founding period. Her objective was to resurrect the rightful place of ideas both in the Revolution and during the creation of the Constitution. That she succeeded admirably can be seen in the great and lasting contributions of historians Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood, among others.

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