A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution
By Carol Berkin
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About this ebook
"Just as the Constitution was a brilliant solution to the problems of the 1780s, Carol Berkin's book is a brilliant account of the making of that constitution. Written with great verve and clarity, it nicely captures all the contingency and unpredictability in the framing of the Constitution."—Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gordon S. Wood
Though the American Revolution is widely recognized as our nation's founding story, the years immediately following the war — when our government was a disaster and the country was in a terrible crisis — were in fact the most crucial in establishing the country's independence. The group of men who traveled to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 had no idea what kind of history their meeting would make. But all their ideas, arguments, and compromises — from the creation of the Constitution itself, article by article, to the insistence that it remain a living, evolving document — laid the foundation for a government that has surpassed the founders' greatest hopes.
Revisiting all the original historical documents of the period and drawing from her deep knowledge of eighteenth-century politics, Carol Berkin opens up the hearts and minds of America's founders, revealing the issues they faced, the times they lived in, and their humble expectations of success.
Carol Berkin
Carol Berkin is Presidential Professor of History, Emerita, of CUNY. She received her bachelor's degree from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from Columbia University where her dissertation received the Bancroft Award in 1972. She has written extensively on women’s history and on the American Revolution, the creation of the Constitution, and the politics of the early Republic. She has appeared in over a dozen documentaries on colonial, revolutionary, and civil war history, given lectures on her specialties at major universities in the United States and England.
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Reviews for A Brilliant Solution
35 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nice little succinct book on the creation of the Constitution. The end of the book includes short biographies of everyone who took part in the convention (whether he signed or not), and the text of the Articles of the Confederation and the Constitution itself.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Review: A Brilliant Solution, Inventing the American Constitution - by Carol Berkin……………..7 July 2013This book published in 2002 should be a must read for all students of American History and Civics. The prose is clear concise and quite complete I would warrant. Quite an easy read. This book is especially good for those such as myself a long time naturalized US citizen and history buff. The author, a CUNY professor has written a most sparkling rendition of the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia over a six month period in 1787. The academic book is replete with source notes, time line, chronology, copies of the Confederation and the US Constitution Articles, plus 54 one page biographies of the state delegates. As a student of democracy, I had often questioned why the US Senate composition is so undemocratic. More-over in this age of rapid voting returns, why the current need for an electoral college to determine who will be the US President? The 1787 Connecticut Compromise has determined the make-up of the US Senate and the Two Senators per State formula was negotiated to protect the smaller states. In my view that requirement is no longer relevant. It is time to re-calculate US Senate representation. One could greatly reduce the cost of Government by combining most of the small states with a larger neighbor. However I doubt that individuals of small states would concur. Once a Wyoming always a Wyoming! So instead we could reduce the number of Senators from States with less than 3M residents to one per state and add Senators proportional to the population of the larger states so that the State of California with a population of 40M warrants 10 Senators. As far as State ratification dates, the sequence is discussed but not all the dates are included. A most minor deficit. I list the 13 states and their ratification dates below.1Delaware7 Dec 17872Pennsylvania12 Dec 17873New Jersey18 Dec 17874Georgia2 Jan 17885Connecticut9 Jan 17886Massachusetts6 Feb 17887Maryland28 Apr 17888South Carolina23 May 17889New Hampshire 21 Jun 178810Virginia25 June 178811New York26 Jul 178812 North Carolina21 Nov178913Rhode Island29 May 1790
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a concise, yet insightful look at the men and processes of developing America's constitution.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The previous reviewer mentions Berkin's lack of footnotes. While it is true, the reviewer doesn't seem to understand that this book is written for a popular audience. Hence, the narrative style. Also, any narrative account of the Convention must necessarily be based on Madison's notes and, seeing that there is no new scholarship here, the decision by the author to leave out intimidating footnotes seems prescient. Berkin's book is a great introduction to the Constitutional Convention giving both a "story" and the issues. Her character portraits are interestingly drawn and does a good job of propelling the story forward which is not an easy thing to do when chronicling a political convention.Both books mentioned by the reviewer, by Wood and Rakove, are fundamentally different from this book and certainly are not seeking the same audience. Wood's "Creation" especially is not something most casual readers, i.e. those caught up in this resurgence of interest in the Founders, will want or even be able to tackle. Berkin makes a point of writing history for the public and she has succeeded here once again.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A decent, if basic, treatment of the Constitutional Convention ... if it's depth you want, though, choose another book (Gordon Wood's "Creation of the American Republic" or Jack Rakove's "Original Meanings" come to mind). Berkin writes without footnotes (troublesome particularly when she makes errors, which happens at least once), in a narrative style which is readable but not great. Her biographical sketches of the Convention delegates (which follow the text) are the most interesting and useful part of the book.