Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Founding Fanatics : Extremism and the Formation of American Democracy - Noah  Eber-Schmid
eTextbook alternate format product

Instant online reading.
Don't wait for delivery!

Go digital and save!

Founding Fanatics

Extremism and the Formation of American Democracy

By: Noah Eber-Schmid

Hardcover | 3 December 2025

At a Glance

Hardcover


$290.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $72.75 with

 or 

Ships in 10 to 15 business days

Since the American Revolution, scholars and citizens have often assumed that dispassionate rationality, reciprocity, and nonviolent tolerance are necessary conditions for the sustained development of democracy. Accordingly, they reject oppositional parties that spurn consensus and terms of mutual respect--and often use force to accomplish their political goals--denouncing extremists as irrational and antidemocratic. Founding Fanatics questions this understanding, examining how moments of tension, violence, and extremism in the United States have sometimes served the pursuit of political equality. Noah Eber-Schmid focuses his analysis on the American Founding era, presenting case studies of the early memorialization of the Boston Massacre, popular debates over Shays' Rebellion, the thought and practices of the Democratic Societies, and the use of the French Revolution in political discourse. From this historical account of popular politics in the Founding era, Eber-Schmid draws new insights for theoretical approaches to contemporary American democracy, challenging assumptions that extremism is always a negative or antidemocratic force. By recognizing the role that democratic extremism has played in the development of American popular democracy, political theorists and citizens will better understand how such movements may contribute to the struggle to deepen and expand political equality and participation that continues today.

More in Political Science & Theory

The Idea of Australia : A search for the soul of the nation - Julianne Schultz
Technofeudalism : What Killed Capitalism - Yanis Varoufakis

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Gilded Rage : Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley - Jacob Silverman
A Sense of Balance - John Howard

RRP $32.99

$26.99

18%
OFF
Abundance : How We Build a Better Future - Ezra Klein

RRP $36.99

$29.75

20%
OFF
The Prince : Popular Penguins : 1st Edition - Niccolo Machiavelli
The Republic : Penguin Classics - Plato

RRP $17.99

$16.75

Perfect Victims : And The Politics Of Appeal - Mohammed El-Kurd

RRP $27.99

$24.99

11%
OFF
Autocracy, Inc : The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum
Breaking History : A White House Memoir - Jared Kushner

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
Who's Afraid of Gender? - Judith Butler

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
The New Conservatism and its Critics - Joseph Prud'homme

RRP $190.00

$167.99

12%
OFF
Europe's Populist Condition - Emmy Eklundh

RRP $57.95

$48.75

16%
OFF
Postcolonial Global Justice - Shuk Ying Chan
The Tyranny of Merit : What's Become of the Common Good? - Michael J. Sandel
The Wizard of the Kremlin - Giuliano da Empoli

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Hope in the Dark : Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities - Rebecca Solnit
The Prince : Prohyptikon Value Classics - Niccolo Machiavelli
Equality Is a Struggle : Bulletins from the Front Line, 2021-2025 - Thomas Piketty