author
John William Burgess
1844–1931
A leading early voice in American political science, he helped build the field as an academic discipline at Columbia University and wrote widely on constitutional government and the state. His life stretched from the Civil War era into the modern university age, giving his work a strong sense of history and institution-building.
2 Audiobooks
The Middle Period, 1817-1858
by John William Burgess
Reconstruction and the Constitution, 1866-1876
by John William Burgess
About the author
Born in Tennessee in 1844, he served on the Union side during the Civil War and later studied at Amherst College. He continued his education in Germany, an experience that shaped his ideas about the modern state and the role of higher learning.
Burgess spent most of his career at Columbia University, where he became one of the central figures in establishing political science as a formal field of study in the United States. He is especially remembered for creating Columbia's graduate program in political science in 1880 and for teaching constitutional law and political science to generations of students.
He also wrote a number of influential books, including works on political science, comparative constitutional law, and the Civil War and Reconstruction. While some of his views now feel dated and controversial, his role in founding and organizing the academic study of politics made him a major figure in American intellectual life.