Review Of The Summer Of 1787: The Men Who Invented The Constitution

Brief Introduction:

The Summer of 1787: the Men Who Invented the Constitution was written by David O. Stewart and was published by Simon and Schuster Paperbacks in 2007. The book is 368 pages (including the special features) and the book is an exquisite biography written about the United States Constitutional Convention. David O. Stewart has many qualities to write about the Constitutional Convention because he practiced and studied law in Washington D.C. for more than 25 years. Furthermore, Stewart argued a case before the Supreme Court as a lawyer and he was also a law clerk to Justice Lewis Powell, a member of the Supreme Court. The book includes numerous special features that enables reader to have a more in-depth idea of the Constitutional

The book is a narrative that accounts the events of the convention and how the Constitution was drafted and created. The book emphasizes the process and thought behind all the compromises created for the Constitution to be ratified by all the delegates. Furthermore, the book outlines the four months it took to craft the Constitution and the intensity of the delegates at the convention. The Summer of 1787 also mentions almost all the delegates in extreme depth, such as Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, John Dickenson, George Washington and other eminent politicians and lawyers. The book discloses what each delegate did at the convention, what their opinions were and what their beliefs

In my opinion, the most important theme in the book is that people should be able to freely express one's thought and that they should be able to freely change their minds. On page fifty two, Stewart claims, “The second added rule specified that delegates could demand reconsideration of every decision the Convention made. Through the coming months delegates would employ this procedure with exasperating frequency. Difficult questions were never resolved in a single discussion and vote. They came up again and again, even after they apparently had been decided. Variations would be offered on earlier proposals, new and old arguments mustered. Often the previous outcome would hold, but every now and then alliances shifted and the constitutional structure changed. This practice gave the Convention a looping, repetitive quality, but – combined with the rule of secrecy – allowed the delegates to revise their views upon wider consultation and deeper reflection, a luxury both precious and not often afforded to public officials, even in the slower pace of the eighteenth century”(Stewart 52). This proclamation displays the importance the opportunity to change one’s position was cherished throughout the entire convention. The author claims that at the Constitutional Convention, delegates were allowed to rethink and rethink their decisions, placing a firm emphasis on improved and changed ideas. By