Volume 0 · The first published book
AMERICAN CRISIS II
These are the times which try men’s souls — once more
By KW Norton. Published 25 November 2025. Twenty-eight pages.
This came first. Before the physics volumes, before the Socratic material, before anything on this site, there was a short pamphlet written in the tradition of Thomas Paine and issued on the sixty-second anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It is not a book about artificial intelligence, and it does not anticipate one. It is a citizen writing to citizens.
Its argument is a single one, held plainly: constitutional government is the only form that begins by admitting human imperfection and then builds guardrails against it. Every other form asks you to trust someone's character. This one assumes character will fail, and asks what structure survives the failure.
Read on Amazon →AMERICAN CRISIS II: These are the times which try men’s souls — once more
Why a pamphlet
The pamphlet is a form with a working history in this country. It is short enough to be read at one sitting, cheap enough to be handed on, and plain enough that no credential is needed to follow it. Paine's Common Sense was forty-seven pages. This one is twenty-eight, and it was written to be read, shared, and printed rather than shelved.
The date was chosen. Publishing on the anniversary of Dallas puts the argument where it belongs: next to the question of what a republic does when a shock arrives and the structure is all that is left holding.
Where it stands in the sequence
Everything that follows — the light and geometry volumes, the Socratic work, the current writing on Renaissance II — is the work of a citizen-scientist rather than an institution. That posture is set here, in the first book, before any of the technical subjects arrived. The later volumes changed the material. They did not change the standpoint.
On the political parts
The pamphlet takes political positions, and some readers close to the author do not share them. That is stated here rather than smoothed over. The author's own posture is that political difference is the accumulated result of a long life full of it: held, not fought. Nothing on this page argues the pamphlet's politics on the author's behalf, and the pamphlet is left to make its own case to whoever picks it up.
Where it connects
- Books in order — the full chronological sequence, beginning here.
- Becoming a Radical Renaissance Human — the current book, written from the same citizen standpoint.