The Dynamic Constitution of the Old and New World: Enterprise, War, and Empire in Western and American Political Thought traces the ideas of enterprise, war and empire from early Western through American political thought. The dynamic constitution of the old world begins with the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the first to recognize that there was a spirit to enterprise, a dynamism that made the ancient Athenians so economically, politically, and militarily successful. Cultivating that dynamism became a central feature in some of the most important texts of ancient and modern political thought. War was tied to the spirit of enterprise because the most enterprising political regimes tended to get themselves into war. Empire was also considered a necessity for constitutional regimes not only because such regimes were daring, acquisitive, and prone to becoming empires. It was critical to protecting those regimes while maintaining political stability and durable liberty. The framers of the Constitution of the United States recognized this. Executing the dynamic constitution of the new world their aim, as The Federalist demonstrated, was to resolve the “Athenian paradox,” to create a dynamic, large liberal constitutional political order that was nonimperial in design.