A Brilliant Solution

Carol Berkin, a historian, tells the story of the American Constitution through the people who wrote it. Her book looks past the Revolution, which is usually treated as the nation's founding moment, to the years that followed. Those years were a period of weak national government and deep crisis, and Berkin argues they were the decisive period for securing the country's independence.

In the summer of 1787, a group of men gathered in Philadelphia without any sense that their meeting would become a landmark in history. Their debates, disagreements, and compromises shaped the Constitution clause by clause and produced the idea that it should remain a living document that could change over time. The government they built has outlasted even their most optimistic expectations.

Drawing on the original documents of the period and her knowledge of eighteenth-century politics, Berkin portrays the founders as individuals. She describes the problems they confronted, the world they lived in, and the modest hopes they held for success.