3902. Miracle at Philadelphia The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787, by Catherine Drinker Bowen (read 23 June 2004) I read this book because Brian Lamb, of C-SPAN, who I greatly admire, mentioned it as one of two books he was much impressed by. I on July 6, 1989, read Clinton Rossiter's masterful account of the same event: 1787 The Grand Convention and when I read that I felt I had covered the event as well as it can be. But I still remember with high interest Bowen's somewhat fictionalized biography of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, read 9 July 1944. This book is so vivid that at times I had to remind myself that it all comes out all right in the end--the Constitution is written and adopted. But in a way it was a near run thing, and could have gone very wrong. This is popular history and could have been more profound but I found it a great book. ( )

This is a wonderfully written history book about the constitutional convention. A lot of the stuff I either didn't know or had forgotten. In any event, I kept thinking: wow, this would make a great movie. ( )

This book uses reports, newspapers, journals, letters, and delegates' diaries to outline what went on that led to the creation of the US Constitution. Some of the key sticking points for the delegates were whether the states would be represented equally or by population. The type of government was also a heavily debated topic. Some delegates wanted a large, powerful government similar to England. Others preferred a small, states-oriented government.

There is also a lot of history into why the US inhabitants left England. This shows quite clearly why many did not want to re-create the country they had just vacated.

The middle two chapters of the book take a break from the convention to describe the population of each state and their way of life in this new land. It also describes the land (both frontier and city) and what it was like to live and travel in those times.
The later chapters dealt with how the Constitution was to be ratified, and the public's reaction to it. I didn't read these chapters in depth. I was pretty tired with the subject by then.

I would recommend this book for anyone wondering why the Founding Fathers did what they did back in 1787. It's very descriptive, and therefore can be a bit boring at times if you're not "into it". ( )