I know little about the early years of the American republic and Lindsay Chervinsky’s Making the Presidency was an all-new-to-me deep dive on the formative years after the revolution. The battles over foreign policy and executive power waged between second president John Adams, presidents-in-waiting Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton in those early days were more than grievances between politicians; the outcomes of those contests had profound implications for the nation still being forged. I suspect perhaps because of the author’s own specialization (this is an academic work, after all), there’s a lot of focus on the fraught relationship between France and the United States about which I frankly had no prior clue. How Adams finally was able to assert his will over Cabinet and opponents was fascinating reading from a political perspective, and there are obvious implications as the presidency is poised to transition between men once again. Central to Chervinsky’s analysis is the thesis that much depends on simple decency – “civic virtue” in her forumulation. The successful defence of democratic institutions depends on people doing the right thing. It’s difficult to discern whether she considers that in the current climate that civic virtue is dead, or whether it will persist in some form, ready for a different era.