To celebrate the two-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our nation's founding, the Harrisburg Book Festival is honored to welcome bestselling author and president of the National Constitution Center Jeffrey Rosen to the state capital for a wide-ranging conversation on our nation's history, the origins of our opposing constitutional visions, and his new book, The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America. This event is in partnership with the National Constitution Center.
Rosen will be in conversation with Yale professor Justin Driver, author of The Fall of Affirmative Action: Race, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Higher Education. This is a ticketed event. Doors will open at 3:30pm; the event will begin at 4:00pm. Seating is general admission; first come, first served. Early arrival is encouraged. Books will be available for purchase at the event.
This event will be live-streamed. Every live-stream ticket includes one signed copy of The Pursuit of Liberty and the live-stream link. The link will be sent at least 24 hours before the event begins. Please check your spam folder if you do not receive the link in time. The books will be shipped via USPS Priority. U.S. addresses only. Please include your shipping address at checkout.
About the Book:
The bestselling author of The Pursuit of Happiness shows how the opposing constitutional visions of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton have defined our country for 250 years, influenced presidents from Washington to Trump, and continue to drive the debate over the power of government today.
In The Pursuit of Liberty, bestselling author and president of the National Constitution Center Jeffrey Rosen explores the clashing visions of Hamilton and Jefferson about how to balance liberty and power in a debate that continues to define—and divide—our country: Jefferson championed states’ rights and individual liberties, while Hamilton pushed for a strong Federal government and a powerful executive. This ongoing tug-of-war has shaped all the pivotal moments in American history, including Abraham Lincoln’s fight against slavery and southern secession, the expansion of federal power under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Ronald Reagan’s and Donald Trump’s conservative push to shrink the size of the federal government.
Rosen also shows how Hamilton and Jefferson’s disagreement over how to read the Constitution has shaped landmark debates in Congress and the Supreme Court about executive power, from John Marshall’s early battles with Andrew Jackson to the current divisions among the justices on issues from presidential immunity to control over the administrative state.
More than ever, the clash between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian ideals resonates today in our most urgent national debates over the question of whether modern presidents are consolidating power and subverting the Constitution—the very threat to American democracy that both Hamilton and Jefferson were determined to avoid. The Pursuit of Liberty is a compelling history of the opposing forces that have shaped our country since its founding, and the ongoing struggle to define the balance between liberty and power.
About the Authors:
Jeffrey Rosen is President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts We the People, a weekly podcast of constitutional debate. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He is the author of nine books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Pursuit of Happiness and Conversations with RBG. His essays and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times Magazine; on NPR; in The New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor; and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer.
Justin Driver is the Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He teaches and writes in the field of constitutional law and is the author of “The Fall of Affirmative Action: Race, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Higher Education.” An elected member of the American Law Institute and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, President Biden appointed Driver to serve on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. He has also written extensively for general audiences, including pieces in The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. His first book — "The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind” — was selected as a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year and an Editors’ Choice of The New York Times Book Review. He is a graduate of Brown, Oxford (where he was a Marshall Scholar), Duke (where he received certification to teach public school), and Harvard Law School (where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review). After graduating from Harvard, Driver served as a law clerk at U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and at the Supreme Court of the United States.
