A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution | 
 enlarge | Author: Carol Berkin
Publisher: Harvest Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 96397
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 1
ISBN: 0156028727
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.318
EAN: 9780156028721
ASIN: 0156028727
Publication Date: October 20, 2003
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Amazon.com Review
"The majority of historians seem to suggest that the founders knew just what to do--and did it, creating a government that would endure for centuries," writes CUNY historian Carol Berkin in the introduction to A Brilliant Solution. Sitting atop the pedestals we've placed them on, these figures would be "amused" by such notions, she says, because in reality the Constitutional Convention was gripped by "a near-paranoid fear of conspiracies" and might easily have succumbed to "a collective anxiety" over its daunting task. The story of the birth of the U.S. Constitution has been told many times, perhaps best by Catherine Drinker Bowen in Miracle at Philadelphia. Berkin's rendition of these well-known events is clear and concise. It does a bit more telling than showing, but this seems to be in the service of brevity--the main text is only about 200 pages. (Another 100 pages of useful appendices follow, including the full texts of the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, plus short biographies of all the convention delegates.) Berkin is an opinionated narrator, unafraid, for instance, to call Maryland's Luther Martin "determinedly uncouth." She also points out that American government has evolved in ways that would make the founders cringe: they believed the presidency would be a ceremonial office (rather than the locus of the nation's political power) and that political parties were bad (when, in fact, they have served democracy well). Readers who want a sure-footed introduction to America's founding would do well to start here. --John J. Miller
Product Description
We know--and love--the story of the American Revolution, from the Declaration of Independence to Cornwallis's defeat. But our first government was a disaster and the country was in a terrible crisis. So 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. But all the ideas, arguments, and compromises led to a great thing: a constitution and a government were born that have surpassed the founders'
greatest hopes.
Revisiting all the original documents and using her deep knowledge of eighteenth-century history and politics, Carol Berkin takes a fresh look at the men who framed the Constitution, the issues they faced, and the times they lived in. Berkin transports the reader into the hearts and minds of the founders, exposing their fears and their limited expectations
of success.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
Clearly superior work for general readers and US survey courses. September 20, 2008
Carol Berkin has produced for general readers and students in college surveys one of the finest and most respected piece of scholarship on this era of US History. The book is readable, it is sound in scholarship and provides a balance understanding of this most celebrated time and document in American History.
John A. Braithwaite
Informative but needed better proofreading August 11, 2008
After reading "Counstitutional Journal", I found Carol Berkin's approach to be well-detailed in some respects, but lacking in (just a very few) others.
Sentences that were too wordy or that suffer from poor grammatical construction, such as the first sentence, last paragraph on page 154 (hardcover edition) throw the reader off the pace of the narrative.
I though the chapter on the delegates was well crafted, but in addition to the Constitution, it would have been a nice touch to include the Bill of Rights in the book as well. The Epilogue is a fitting summation to this book.
All in all, a good book, on an absorbing subject.
A Brilliant Account! December 28, 2007
An engaging, enjoyable account of the workings of our "Founding Fathers" as they strive to write our Constitution. An interesting look at the personalities, compromises, maneuvering, and outcomes of this process. After reading this book, I know more about the Constitution and our government that I ever knew before. Any Social Studies teacher who misses this one is really missing out.
 Interesting, though lacking a bit November 18, 2007
The most interesting parts of this book are the personal descriptions of the men who drafted the Constitution and the comments on the mood of the country at the time. The author makes an interesting observation: The American Revolution was not one revolution; rather, it was 13 revolutions, one for each of the colonies. However, post-1776 it became clear that a stronger form of Federal government was required. This book does a good job describing the varying opinions of state vs. federal responsibilities, as viewed by the founding fathers.
It's a relatively short book, though some of the descriptions drag a bit. And I would have liked to see a description of how the Bill of Rights came to be. Perhaps that was not part of the original Constitution, but it was added shortly thereafter and seems to be an integral part of this important document.
A Reflection of the Past March 15, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
In light of current events that occurred after the turn of the century, the presidential election of 2000 and the US Pentagon and World Trade Center disaster, Carol Berkin laments on those events as well as her life as a historian, and responds by reflecting on the historical past with her book, A BRILLIANT SOLUTION: INVENTING THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION. She revisits the US Constitution with the present in mind, but reflects on the past with a critical eye. For example, Berkin asks one of the most frequently asked questions to arise in recent times, what would the Founding Fathers do?
Berkin succinctly provides answers with her examination of the Founding Fathers and state delegates who helped comprise and create of one of the most significant documents in American history. The book is not meant to be a comprehensive examination, but a concise narrative that describes the inception of the Constitution, which began with the Articles of Confederation, and includes a vicissitude of discussion, which reveals the impassioned activity and skepticism that occurred in the writing of the document that even the Founders did not think would succeed. With her dramatic discussion surrounding the events of the writing of the Constitution, Berkin contains a character sketch of the key framers that intimately describes their intellect as well as their quirks and eccentricities. From personal squabbles to triumphant cooperation, it is amazing that everyone came out of the experience alive.
The biographical sketches after her discussion spotlights each delegate and their unique personal qualities. Most of the delegates attained their education through prominent universities at home and abroad, and came from distinguishable families. But for those who did not, they came from modest upbringings and backgrounds, which ran the gamut of artisans, agrarians, and merchants. Upon reading through each synopsis, several of the names rear close to home in terms of Virginia history, from the famous George Washington to the eminent George Wythe; as a teacher at the College of William and Mary, Wythe "trained Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and John Marshall in the law" (248).
A BRILLIANT SOLUTION reads like an essay with its compact and reader friendly format. For the casual history reader, the book is a welcome introduction to the US Constitution and those who helped construct the foundations of American society, which included the rights for individuals as interpreted through governmental laws. Overall, this book stresses the importance of understanding the present through a historical perspective.
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