Federalists Nos. 1-85 ... whaddya got?

I got a gift card to a bookstore for my birthday and I'm thinking of picking up an annotated version of the Fed Papers. This wasn't covered in any History class I took so, embarrassingly, I know nothing about the work of Madison & friends.

To all who have read them: Are they worth picking up for a little bit of, oh, light reading? Are they more poignant given today's political clime? Do they really give you a sense of what the country was going through in the 1780s? Should I just pick out four or five of the best ones and read them online?

I know the Federalist Society is a conservative/libertarian outfit. For this left-of-center schmuck, are the Fed papers going to read like Victor Davis Hansen in a powdered wig or are they politically neutral?

Thanks for any input you can give me.

 

Please put a spoilers warning in the title.

 

I have a book of all the federalist papers, started it, but it down and haven't ever picked it back up. It's not that I don't want to, but getting through some these is a little more work than I had hoped they would be. Many of the papers are quite policy wonkish, which is cool if you're into that. You might come across one out of five that have a striking poignancy with events of today, but overall I wouldn't classify this as light reading, however.