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A More Perfect Union: The Making of the United States Constitution
A More Perfect Union The Making of the United States Constitution Author:William Peters A sweeping narrative with all the drama of good fiction, A More Perfect Union is an accurate, day-by-day account of the pivotal event of American history - the 1787 Convention that drafted the Constitution. Transported to Philadelphia with fifty-five delegates from twelve states, the reader shares their four-month struggle to create a new framew... more »ork of government to preserve a shaky Union.
Written with the immediacy and depth of ivid reporting, the book reverberates with speeches by such men as James Madison, Roger Sherman, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Rutledge, and Edmund Randolph - both for and against principles that today form the bedrock of American government. From the sometimes angry debates of men whose characters and motivations are revealed through their actual words and acts, readers will see the Constitution take form, vote by vote, clause by clause.
The book follows the delegates not just in the Convention but as they dine inPhiladelphia's inns and taverns, meet to devise strategy, attend church, or sample the pleasures of the country's largest city. It accompanies Washington as he sits for a portrait by Charles Willson Peale and , during an adjournment, on a visit to Valley Forge. It follows the delegates to dinner in Franklin's new dining room and tea under the mulberry tree in his garden, looks over their shoulders as they read the newspapers and write letters home. Readers will be left with a new understanding of the nation's beginnings and the closest thing to a sense of having been there.« less