Serpent in Eden by Professor Tyson Reeder provides historical context — with James Madison at the center — for modern political challenges of foreign meddling and partisan conflict.
Tyson Reeder, a history professor in the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences won the George Washington Prize for his second monograph Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison’s America, published by Oxford University Press.
The George Washington Prize is a global award that honors the year’s best written books about the revolutionary and founding era of the United States. Previous winners of the prize have been Annette Gordon-Reed for “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family” and Lin-Manuel Miranda for the play “Hamilton”.
Upon receiving the news, he felt a mix of shock, gratefulness, surprise, and that the book had reached its true potential.
“I truly didn’t expect to win — there were such stellar works in that list,” Reeder says. “I have so much respect for the other scholars who were finalists, that I just thought I would just be very happy for any one of them to win and thought they would have been deserving of it.”
Reeder received the award at a Union Club Ceremony in New York City on Oct. 8. He was with his wife Karen Reeder, friends, colleagues, and other finalists. When it was announced that Reeder won, he gave remarks of gratitude, signed copies of his book, and participated in a Q&A session.
“The George Washington Prize, because of its stature, kind of puts you into a different category as a historian so that’s incredibly gratifying," Reeder says. “It’s the sort of prize that transforms how people think of the book and you as a historian.”
Serpent in Eden also received the Book of the Year Award from the Journal of the American Revolution.
A cycle of meddling and distrust
As editor for the Papers of James Madison at the University of Virginia before coming to Brigham Young University in 2023, Reeder was introduced to Madison's life, story, and politics. While working with the content, he started to run into material that would soon provide the foundations for Serpent in Eden.
Reeder felt that he could not read the records of Madison “without seeing parallels to today's partisan politics and foreign meddling,” especially considering Madison's position as secretary of state in the young American nation. In 2017, Reeder was seeing many of the same types of accusations in current politics, and it was yet another motivation for him to write Serpent in Eden.
As he pieced together stories, he determined that Madison would be the focal point for the book because Madison always seemed to be at the center of the story. At various stages of the American Revolution, Madison was active not as a soldier but as a politician. He became a key player at the constitutional convention, a congressman, secretary of state, and then president of the United States. It seemed that at each stage of Madison’s life foreign meddling was a central part of his concern.
“I think that’s what made the book click,” says Reeder. “Madison’s life and story gives the book a narrative arc so it’s not just random stories about foreign meddling. Madison grounds the narrative of the book.”
Through these stories, Reeder illuminates a malicious cycle that develops between foreign meddling and partisan politics: each time foreign powers meddled in U.S. politics, partisans in the United States would accuse each other of foreign collusion, which then heightened partisan politics and distrust. Reeder argues that this heightened distrust during America’s founding gave foreign powers more room to meddle in U.S. politics, continuing the cycle.
“I noticed that seemed to have been happening between the 1770s and the War of 1812 in the early United States and it felt so relevant to things that seemed to be happening with the president in 2017,” Reeder says.
Serpent in Eden aims to encourage readers to be introspective about their own politics — to question why we support the policies we do and whether we ourselves contribute to the ongoing cycle of distrust between political parties.
"I hope that people come to understand Madison better and the Madison known as the father of the U.S. Constitution,” Reeder says. “I hope they come to understand the Constitution better and that they're able to grapple with our political movement in positive ways because of the book.”
Reeder's next book is already underway and looks at how Americans transitioned from a monarchy to constitutional government with executive power.
“I love books that I can dig really deep into the history and still feel like I’m speaking to the present moment,” Reeder says. “I tell my students that history doesn’t give us clear right answers about our political movement, but it does give us important perspective about our political moment. I enjoy writing history that is relevant in that way.”
Learn more information about Reeder and the College’s history department here.
