{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20261010T034321Z-reviewed-full-unique-works","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0547537816?tag=bookfrontie00-20","asin":"0547537816","authors":["Carol Berkin"],"book_id":"9780547537818","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/a-brilliant-solution-9780547537818","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780547537818.jpg?v=22bc1bebce6b5bfb","description":"Historian Carol Berkin's A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution is a rich narrative portrait of post-revolutionary America and the men who shaped its political future. \"Just as the Constitution was a brilliant solution to the problems of the 1780s, Carol Berkin's book is a brilliant account of the making of that constitution. Written with great verve and clarity, it nicely captures all the contingency and unpredictability in the framing of the Constitution.\"—Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gordon S. Wood Though the American Revolution is widely recognized as our nation's founding story, the years immediately following the war — when our government was a disaster and the country was in a terrible crisis — were in fact the most crucial in establishing the country's independence. The group of men who traveled to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 had no idea what kind of history their meeting would make. But all their ideas, arguments, and compromises — from the creation of the Constitution itself, article by article, to the insistence that it remain a living, evolving document — laid the foundation for a government that has surpassed the founders' greatest hopes. Revisiting all the original historical documents of the period and drawing from her deep knowledge of eighteenth-century politics, Carol Berkin opens up the hearts and minds of America's founders, revealing the issues they faced, the times they lived in, and their humble expectations of success.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780547537818","publication_date":"20031020","publisher":"HarperCollins","slug":"a-brilliant-solution","subtitle":"Inventing the American Constitution","title":"A Brilliant Solution"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"HIS036030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Revolutionary America (1775-1800)","score":0.7833,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"HIS036020","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Colonial America (to 1775)","score":0.7457,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"HIS036040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"19th-Century America","score":0.7327,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"HIS036030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Revolutionary America (1775-1800)","score":0.7833,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"HIS036020","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Colonial America (to 1775)","score":0.7457,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"HIS036040","confidence_band":"medium","label":"19th-Century America","score":0.7327,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"HIS029000","confidence_band":"high","label":"North American History","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"HIS036000","confidence_band":"high","label":"U.S. History","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"HIS036030","confidence_band":"high","label":"Revolutionary America (1775-1800)","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"POL010000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Political History & Ideas","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"POL022000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Constitutional Theory","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Revolutionary America (1775-1800)","score":0.7833,"slug":"revolutionary-america-1775-1800"},{"label":"Colonial America (to 1775)","score":0.7457,"slug":"colonial-america-to-1775"},{"label":"19th-Century America","score":0.7327,"slug":"19th-century-america"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers interested in how the U.S. Constitution was created","Good for readers interested in post-Revolutionary American political history"],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Gordon S. 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