The American Political Tradition is one of the most influential and widely read historical volumes of our time. First published in 1948, its elegance, passion, and iconoclastic erudition laid the groundwork for a totally new knowledge of the American previous. By writing a ‘kind of intellectual history of the assumptions behind American politics,’ Richard Hofstadter changed the way Americans understand the relationship between power and ideas in their nationwide experience. Like just a small number of American historians before him-Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles A. Beard are examples-Hofstadter was able to articulate, in one work, a traditional vision that motivated and shaped a whole generation.