JCB Reads: Tyson Reeder's Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison's America

Launched during the 2024-5 academic year, JCB Reads offers former JCB fellows the opportunity to share their recent book publications. These online events are open to anyone who is interested. Please register for the webinar at https://brown.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JGAMs8hWQ92o344ICxHMdg.

Join us on Tuesday, February 24, 2026 at noon for a virtual discussion of Tyson Reeder's Serpent in Eden: Foreign Meddling and Partisan Politics in James Madison's America (Oxford University Press, 2024).

All are welcome!

About the book

A story of espionage, shadow diplomacy, foreign scheming, and domestic backstabbing in the formative years of the American republic.

Tyson Reeder's book traces early America's rocky beginnings, when foreign interference and political conflict threatened to undermine its aspirations and ideals, even its very existence. Spanning the period from the Revolution to the War of 1812, and focusing particularly on the presidency of James Madison, it reveals a nation adjusting to rancorous partisan politics, aggravated by the untested and imperfect new tools of governance and the growing power of media. Foreign powers, mainly Great Britain and Napoleonic France, exploited these conditions to advance their own agendas, interfering in U.S. elections to promote the outcome they favored. Dissent and disloyalty became dangerously interdigitated, nearly bringing the new republic to the brink of collapse.