"In this painfully timely volume, Dennis Rasmussen demonstrates that many of America's founders understood the potential fragility of their unprecedented creation. He rescues the founders, and the Enlightenment of which they were exemplars, from the caricature that they were unreasonably serene about the ability of reason to tame reality." --George F. Will, author of The Conservative Sensibility "In a series of compelling, deftly wrought portraits, Dennis Rasmussen shows how the Founding Fathers came to fear for the future of America's bold experiment in republican self-government. Polarized parties, foreign interference, and seemingly intractable conflicts of interest and ideology threatened to destroy the union they struggled to create. Their anxieties put our own more modest divisions in reassuring perspective." --Peter S. Onuf, author of Jefferson's Empire "In this brilliant book, Dennis Rasmussen brings to vivid life the profound fears of some of America's leading founders about the future of their nation.

Their urgent concern was whether the destruction of the nascent republic was on the horizon; given the current political instability in America, it is also ours. Fears of a Setting Sun is well worth reading for its historical analysis and for the lessons we might draw for the future of our great experiment in republican government." --Colleen A. Sheehan, author of The Mind of James Madison "In a time when we have experienced a stress test on the Constitution, it is not surprising that many are doubting the success of our system of government. Dennis Rasmussen gives us a tour through the doubts of the framers themselves about the system they helped to create. Fears of a Setting Sun reveals the origins of the Constitution's weaknesses and may help readers discover a way to save our founding document--and the system of government it shaped." -- Corey Brettschneider, author of The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents.