A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution

If you've ever wondered how a group of 18th-century soldiers, farmers, lawyers and businessmen managed to come up with our miracle of a Constitution . . . Berkin explains it in her exciting re-creation.-The Star-Ledger (Newark) We know the story of the American Revolution, from the Declaration of Independence to Cornwallis's defeat. But our first government ended in disaster, leaving the budding country in a terrible crisis. When a group of men traveled to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to save a nation in danger of collapse, they had no great expectations for the meeting that would make history and lead to a constitution and a government that have outlasted their highest hopes. Revisiting original documents and using her deep knowledge of eighteenth-century history and politics, Carol Berkin reveals the human strength behind our country's great constitution. Take s a f re s h l ook at the much-trampled ground of Philadelphia in 1787. Drops the, 'It all came down to us written on a stone tablet' pose and goes into all the confusion, paranoia and luck involved.-MOLY IVINS, The Seattle Times C A R O L B E R K I N is a professor of American History at Baruch College and the Ph.D. program in History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The author of five books, Berkin was a commentator for the PBS documentary Benjamin Franklin.…