Skip to main content

Nation Building

By

Pauline Maier sizes up the Constitutional debates,


On Sept. 17, 1787, the convention that had been sitting in Philadelphia for four months to design a new form of government for the United States adjourned, offering its handiwork to the nation. Almost a year later, on Sept. 13, 1788, Congress declared that the Constitution had been duly ratified, and prescribed the rules for the first presidential election the following year. Pauline Maier’s delightful and engrossing book shows how America got from the first date to the second — and ultimately to today, since we still live with the same document, however modified.

One caveat: To like this book, you have to like politics. “Ratification” is an ur-text of the Almanac of American Politics. It has process, issues, arguments, local context, major players, minor players — and hoopla. “The popular excitement” that attended the struggle, Maier writes, “reminded me at times of Americans’ obsession with the final games of the World Series, but with greater intensity because everyone understood that the results would last far longer than a season. . . . Politics was in a real sense the first national game.” 

from a review by Richard Brookhiser in the NYTimes
........................

American Scripture looks good too.

Comments

  1. James FergusonJanuary 15, 2011 at 11:36 AM

    I think a book like this would be great for the next reading group. What do others think?

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonJanuary 16, 2011 at 6:19 PM

    I ordered the book. Will take me about three weeks to receive it. So if everyone is game we can set a reading for February 15.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TripplerJanuary 17, 2011 at 5:27 PM

    Sounds like a good read. I just put in a request & hope to have by the end of the week.

    ReplyDelete
  4. avrdsJanuary 20, 2011 at 4:11 AM

    Just read the opening to Ratification. I'm in! I've always wanted to read a really good history of the Constitution. I'll try to stay ahead of the rest of you this time instead of lagging weeks behind.

    ReplyDelete
  5. TripplerJanuary 26, 2011 at 1:59 AM

    Just my copy but see once again that it has very small print. Good thing I have a bottle of Visine!

    Looks like a very interesting read.

    ReplyDelete
  6. James FergusonJanuary 26, 2011 at 6:46 AM

    Yea, small print is getting to be too much for me as well.

    ReplyDelete
  7. TripplerJanuary 26, 2011 at 8:10 AM

    Oh no! Are you saying, you're getting old (like me)?

    Ach, but it happens to all of us. How I wish we could find the Fountain of Youth!

    :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. James FergusonJanuary 26, 2011 at 11:56 AM

    Yep, finally had to accept reading glasses. Has taken me awhile to get used to them, but my wife tells me they make me look more intelligent. ; )

    ReplyDelete
  9. avrdsJanuary 26, 2011 at 4:12 PM

    From what I've heard, the Kindle is the fountain of youth for us readers.... I just got an ipad. I need to figure out how to add a book reader to it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. avrdsJanuary 26, 2011 at 4:16 PM

    Speaking of Kindles....

    Robert is in for Ratification. I think he missed the last part of that Colonel conversation, but now knows how to find the turn at the end of the hall. If you don't follow the links via the recent comments it's easy to get lost in here.

    I'll be in DC for the first week of the discussion, but will take the book with me on the plane.

    ReplyDelete
  11. James FergusonJanuary 26, 2011 at 6:23 PM

    I don't need reading glasses when reading from the computer screen, but I think that is more a matter of distance from the screen.

    ReplyDelete
  12. TripplerJanuary 27, 2011 at 8:23 PM

    I will also be reading via audio book Brian McGinty's "Lincoln & the Court'':

    http://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Court-Brian-McGinty/dp/0674026551

    ReplyDelete
  13. robertwhelanJanuary 28, 2011 at 1:48 AM

    Thanks avrds---and a special thanks to you, Gintaras for the gray tint on my screen which allows me to participate---my eye doctor says I'm comming along excellently and wants me to give my brain another six month to rewire my vision--after which, if called for' he will order me gray tinted lenses to use for reading--shaded, I'm told, with genuine Gintaras Gray, in honor of yourself. Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  14. James FergusonJanuary 28, 2011 at 7:21 AM

    That's a high honor Robert. Anything to help keep you a participant in this forum. You are a most valued contributor and I have greatly enjoyed and learned from your depth of reading, understanding and comments over the years.

    ReplyDelete
  15. TripplerFebruary 4, 2011 at 3:53 AM

    I'm up to p 70 in Maier ~ kinda slow reading (due to the small print with many words on a page) but it is a good topic.

    ReplyDelete
  16. avrdsFebruary 12, 2011 at 5:40 PM

    I'm still trying to finish the Washington bio which is very good, but slow going for me.

    It's a lot like the TR bio -- too good not to keep reading. And it is a much fuller look at Washington's life than others I've read (one would hope at 900 pages!), and he is as good a writer as Morris without all the snarky asides.

    Trippler you would hate it, though -- very small print. I think this would be a good one to read on a Kindle. I wonder how Robert fared reading it.

    I leave town on the 15th so will take Ratification to DC with me.

    ReplyDelete
  17. James FergusonFebruary 12, 2011 at 10:22 PM

    My copy of Ratification came yesterday. Interesting start. Brought to mind Bernard Bailyn's book on the Ideological Origins of America and all the pamphleteering he described.

    ReplyDelete
  18. TripplerFebruary 14, 2011 at 2:44 AM

    I'm up to about p 130 ~ are we going to use this thread or start a fresh one for the discussion?

    ReplyDelete
  19. James FergusonFebruary 14, 2011 at 6:44 AM

    I will open a new thread on Tuesday for discussion. Fascinating book thus far. Interesting reading Mason's and Randolph's concerns with the Constitution, many of which turned out to be true. And, for all this claptrap on the right that this is some kind of sacred document, when virtually all of those who signed it saw it as a work in progress, not a finished document.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more