Most Popular Books by Ray Gibson

Now widely regarded as the best available guide to the study of the Founding, the first edition of Interpreting the Founding provided summaries and analyses of the leading interpretive frameworks that have guided the study of the Founding since the publication of Charles Beard''s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution in 1913. For this new edition, Gibson has revised and updated his study, including his comprehensive bibliography, and also added a new concluding chapter on the "Unionist Paradigm" or "Federalist Interpretation" of the Constitution. As in the original work, Gibson argues in the new edition that scholarship on the Founding is no longer steered by a single dominant approach or even by a set of questions that control its direction. He features insightful extended discussions of pioneering works by leading scholars of the Founding--including Louis Hartz, Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, and Garry Wills--that best exemplify different schools of interpretation. He focuses on six approaches that have dominated the modern study of the Founding-Progressive, Lockean/liberal, Republican, Scottish Enlightenment, multicultural, and multiple traditions approaches-before concluding with the Unionist or Federalist paradigm. For each approach, Gibson traces its fundamental assumptions, revealing deeper ideological and methodological differences between schools of thought that, on the surface, seem to differ only about the interpretation of historical facts. While previous accounts have treated the study of the Founding as the sequential replacement of one paradigm by another, Gibson argues that all of these interpretations survive as alternative and still viable approaches. By examining the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and showing how each has simultaneously illuminated and masked core truths about the American Founding, he renders a balanced account of the continuing and very vigorous debate over the origins and foundations of the American republic. Brimming with intellectual vigor and a based on both a wide and deep reading in the voluminous literature on the subject, Gibson''s new edition is sure to reinforce this remarkable book''s reputation while winning new converts to his argument.

Over the course of the last century, scholars have furiously debated four questions concerning the Founders and their act of creation. Were the Framers motivated by their economic interests? How democratic was the Framers'' Constitution? Should we interpret the Founding using philosophical or strictly historical approaches? What traditions of political thought were most important to the Framers? In Understanding the Founding: The Crucial Questions, Alan Gibson examines the preconceptions that scholars bring to these questions, explores the deepest sources of scholars'' disagreements over them, and suggests new and thoughtful lines of interpretation and inquiry. Building on his previous work, Interpreting the Founding, which offers a synoptic overview of the competing perspectives that have informed modern scholarship on the Founders...

Activity book with simple picture instructions for parents to share with young children.

Provides instructions for making papier mãachâe, and suggests a variety of projects, including jewelry, bowls, frames, containers of various types, a monster mask, a Christmas angel, and other useful and decorative items.

Presents instructions for pipecleaner bangles, paper fish, lacy cards, vegetable people, furry snakes, paper flowers, and other crafts.

Christmas projects include directions for making cards, games and decorations.

Shows how to draw people including a workman, an angel, a soccer player, an astronaut, a parachutist, and an ice skater.

Using beads and materials found at home, this book presents projects for necklaces and bracelets.

Text and illustrations give detailed directions for making various kinds of paper pop-up items.

This book gives clear step-by-step pictures for crayon drawings of a giraffe, a fish, a caterpillar, a truck, and other things.

Designed to help young children gain an understanding of numbers, this book presents easy activities which involve counting, adding, subtracting and sharing.

Step-by-step picture instructions for coloring, drawing animals and people, and finger painting.

Step-by-step instructions for young children for creative activities including puppets, postcards and picnic ideas. Contains stickers to use with the projects.

This print and count book for the very young combines fun activities with opportunities for learning and practising essential pre-school skills using just half a potato and some paint. Clear picture instructions are provided.

This book gives simple step-by-step instructions to transform your T-shirts using just a few fabric paints.

Provides ideas to introduce children to the pleasures of reading, encouraging the development of basic reading skills while building up a general awareness of written and spoken language in everyday situations

Try out different crafts from papier mâché to stencilling, model-making to origami while making these personalized gifts.

Basic printing techniques for children using such objects as potatoes, sponges, leaves and rubber stamps.

Describes the many unusual things that people collect.