Book Review: American miracle is detailed

Author Richard Beeman said he spent 40 years thinking about this effort and four years writing it. It took far less time for the "plain, honest men” (the title comes from a Pennsylvania delegate’s description of the framers) to craft a remarkable document that hit stumbling blocks at every turn, including widespread apathy over whether such a national charter even was needed.

The delegates began meeting in Philadelphia in 1787. George Washington, the star of "1776,” was constitutional convention president. Delegates sparred over the usual boilerplate issues: free states vs. slave states; big states vs. small states; republicanism vs. federalism.

Beeman’s book lacks the drama of "1776” and the sublime readability of "John Adams” (he wasn’t at the convention, by the way) but is unparalleled in its detail of events that were only nominally remarked upon at the time despite the importance of what the delegates were up to.

The first American miracle was winning a war for independence against a seemingly unbeatable foe. The next was hammering out a charter that many didn’t want but without which the nation perhaps could not have survived.

— J.E. McReynolds