The Richard Beeman we see tonight will not be the Research Entomologist of the Stored Product Insect Research Unit, Grain Marketing & Production Research Center in Kansas. No, we've got the Richard Beeman who's a history professor with a bunch of books out. His most recent one is Plain, Honest Men:The Making of the American Constitution (excerpt here).
Together, Amazon and Barnes & Noble have the industry reviews (consensus: excellent). There's the usual assortment of newspaper reviews, too, which give more detail. Well, except for the one by Kasey S. Pipes, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush.Of his ten paragraphs, only these two at the end appear to actually review the book:
Skillfully, Beeman uses character development to drive his narrative. Specifically, he focuses on James Madison, Ben Franklin and George Washington as the three men who helped "make the revolution of 1787 possible." Madison offered ideas, plans and creativity; Franklin facilitated key compromises; and Washington's presence and prestige gave the proceedings immediate legitimacy.
The result was a Constitution that still works and inspires today. Far from a miracle, Beeman argues that founding father Robert Morris correctly judged it as something else:"While some have boasted it as a work from Heaven, others have given it a less righteous origin. I have many reasons to believe that it is the work of plain, honest men."
I was struck by the NYTimes review also, right from the start:
We like to think of our nation’s founders as men with unwavering fealty to high-minded principles. To some extent they were. But when they gathered in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 to write the Constitution, they showed that they were also something just as great and often more difficult to be: compromisers. In that regard they reflected not just the classical virtues of honor and integrity but also the Enlightenment’s values of balance, order, tolerance, scientific calibration and respect for other people’s beliefs. On almost all issues that they faced — with one very big exception — this art of compromise served them well. As Benjamin Franklin, that ultimate Enlightenment sage, conveyed in both his actions and words at the convention, compromisers may not make great heroes but they do make great democracies....
Compromise is great! That's a theme I've heard before. Turns out the author is Walter Isaacson, chief executive of the Aspen Institute -- who's also on the board of the Bipartisan Policy Center. Isn't Sourcewatch wonderful? For more commentary on the article, take a look. (The review's worth reading, though.)
The Christian Science Monitor has this to say:
The title of the book is a bit of a stretch, though. The men who gathered in Philadelphia were anything but "plain." Almost all of them were wealthy, and many owned slaves even if some claimed to not really like the idea of keeping people in bondage.
A more accurate title might simply call them "bullheaded." ...
"Plain Honest Men" isn’t a page-turner. This is a story of committees and compromise, not stirring speeches and verbal duels....
The passage of the centuries has raised our expectations about our country’s founders and their limited embrace of liberty, democracy, and equality. We’re bound to be disappointed by the Constitution’s failures, not least of all regarding the so-called "necessary evil" of slavery.
"There are no moral heroes to be found in the story of slavery and the making of the American Constitution," Beeman writes. Even the delegates who hinted at the immorality of slavery weren’t prepared "to match words with deeds."
As Beeman explains, the founding fathers didn’t just think they were superior to blacks. They viewed slavery through the prism of all-important property rights and the specter of countless emancipated slaves roaming the land....
Here's how historian http://en.wikipedia.org/... Mary Beth Norton], writing for the Washington Post, sees it:
Do we need another narrative history of the Constitutional Convention of 1787? Richard Beeman's "Plain, Honest Men" immediately brings that question to mind. Beeman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, understands the need to explain why anyone should bother to read his version of these familiar events; he identifies nine predecessors, two of them recent. So the preface declares that his is "a full narrative account" that will "take readers behind the scenes and beyond the debates, into the taverns and boardinghouses of the city." In addition to liberating the 55 Founding Fathers from their "bronze or marble likenesses," he admits to a contemporary "patriotic" purpose, one that informs the entire book. He hopes to persuade those who think that the "original intent" of the Founding Fathers can be discerned and should be followed today (read: Justice Antonin Scalia and his acolytes) that the framers approached their task with "uncertainty and humility," and that those who interpret their words now should adopt the same stance. As Beeman remarks, "there was precious little agreement among even those who had drafted the Constitution as to the precise meaning" of many clauses....
Beeman devotes more attention to the slavery issue -- "the paradox at the nation's core" -- than is common in books that laud the founders' achievement....
Although Beeman stresses the contingent nature and uncertain interpretation of the convention's decisions, what most strikes a contemporary reader is his description of endless bickering and tedious debates. Members of Congress, as well as Supreme Court justices, might well profit from this history lesson: The convention succeeded nonetheless.
This review addressed the book itself:
...Beeman’s sure command of the issue of slavery at the convention and his skilled treatment of the myriad ways the institution of human bondage was enshrined in the 1787 Constitution is first rate. He puts forth a refreshing middle course between historians who have adopted William Lloyd Garrison’s 19th-century critique of the Constitution as a "covenant with death," and those who have argued that the document was intended to put slavery on a road to extinction. As Beeman rightly notes, if "there is a villain in this story it is the collective indifference of the Founding Fathers to the inhumanity of the institution to which they gave sanction." ....
Anyway, could be an interesting interview. |