On October 27, 1787, the first article was published in a series that would come to be known as the Federalist Papers (e-book, e-audio, print). Over the next ten months, three men – Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay – would write 85 essays and articles arguing for the ratification of the United States Constitution. The articles were originally published under the pseudonym "Publius," but scholars now believe that 51 of them were written by Hamilton, 29 by Madison, and 5 by Jay.

The original governing document of the United States, the Articles of Confederation, brought the states together in a loose federation. The federal government was a weak one, consisting only of a Continental Congress, with no president or judiciary, and no ability to collect taxes. It soon became clear that the new country needed a stronger central government. It was difficult for the United States to conduct foreign policy under the Articles, for instance, because the government had no real power to compel the individual states to comply with any treaties it might be party to.

In the summer of 1787, the states sent delegates to Philadelphia for a Constitutional Convention. The original goal was to revise the Articles of Confederation, but the delegates eventually decided to write an entirely new constitution and strengthen the federal government. Richard Beeman's Plain, Honest Men (e-book, e-audio, print) is a thorough account of the Constitutional Convention.

Ratification of the Constitution was not a foregone conclusion; many were wary of a strong federal government, which they feared would take too much power from the states. Similar articles were published in opposition to the Constitution; there was no central author or group of authors organizing the opposition, so the "Anti-Federalist Papers" are not so clearly defined. Ralph Ketcham collects the most important of them in The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates (e-book).

Hamilton, Madison, and Jay hoped to sway the vote in the New York legislature and elsewhere – they encouraged newspapers outside New York to reprint the essays – by addressing each piece of the Constitution, and each argument against it, in great detail. There are, for instance, six papers on why the Articles of Confederation were no longer adequate to the country's needs, and eleven on the creation of a president and the precise nature of his powers.

It seems unlikely that the Papers actually did much to sway the ratification debate. By the time the New York legislature took up the issue, the required nine states had already ratified the Constitution, and New York would have put itself in an awkward outlying position by not voting in favor. But the Federalist Papers are key documents in understanding the intent of the men who wrote the Constitution, and they have been cited in some 300 Supreme Court decisions.

The three authors of the Federalist Papers all went on to major roles in the new federal government. Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury; Madison was the fourth President; and Jay was the first Chief Justice of the United States. Each of them has been the subject of full-length biographies – Ron Chernow on Hamilton (e-book, e-audio, print, audio), Richard Brookhiser on Madison (e-book, print), and Walter Stahr on Jay (e-book, print).

And of course, we can't bring up Alexander Hamilton without mentioning Lin-Manuel Miranda's wildly successful musical Hamilton, based largely on the Chernow biography; it's available streaming or on CD.

Also This Week

• October 28, 1927: Cleo Laine was born. Laine is a jazz, pop, and musical theater singer with a range of more than three octaves. She usually performed with her husband, composer and bandleader John Dankworth, until his death in 2010. Laine is the only woman ever to receive Grammy nominations in pop, jazz, and classical categories. Several of Laine's recordings are available for streaming or download at Freegal.
• October 29, 1938: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was born. Sirleaf has been the president of Liberia since 2006, and is the first female elected head of state in Africa. For most of the 1980s and 1990s, Sirleaf lived in political exile in the United States and Ivory Coast, while Liberia was under military rule. In 2011, Sirleaf received the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, for their work on women's rights in their countries. Helene Cooper's biography of Sirleaf, Madame President, is available as an e-book or e-audio, and in print.
• October 27, 1966: Steve Almond was born. Almond is a writer of short stories and essays. Subjects of his non-fiction have included Kurt Vonnegut, parenthood, and an anti-football "manifesto." In Candyfreak, Almond tours the United States, visiting small, regional candy companies and considering the state of American candy. Candyfreak is available as an e-book or e-audio, in print, and in audio.
• October 29, 1974: R. A. Dickey was born. Dickey is one of the few remaining knuckleball pitchers in Major League Baseball, and in 2012, was the first such pitcher to win the Cy Young Award.  A knuckleball moves erratically after it's thrown, so it's harder to hit. It's also harder to throw accurately, and is less popular than it once was. Because it's a slower pitch, it puts less strain on the arm; many knuckleballers have continued to pitch into their 40s. Dickey and fellow knuckleballer Tim Wakefield are followed through a season in the documentary Knuckleball, available for streaming or on DVD.