An important addition to Dr. Commager's The Great Declaration and The Great Proclamation, The Great Constitution gives all the color and the truth and the nobility of the Constitutional Convention.

"We exhibit the novel and astonishing spectacle of a people deliberating on what form of government will be most conducive to their happiness."

So wrote George Washington to an English friends as the people of the thirteen free Colonies considered the Constitution so recently presented to them.

The book also tells of the need for a better government than was offered by the Articles of Confederation, of the triumph of reason over fear and pettiness in the secrecy of the convention hall, of the surprise of the people at the Convention's outcome, and how the States, one by one, fell into line to accept it.

James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, John Randolph and more are on stage to offer bold experiments and inspired arguments.

But dominating all of them is the noble George Washington—journeying to Philadelphia to lend his prestige to the Convention, presiding over the meetings with a calmness to cool the hottest debators, lending his weight to those fighting to overcome objections to the new document, and, finally, going triumphantly to New York to take the oath of office as President and to give his inaugural address.

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty," Washington said then in New York, "[is] staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American People." This is still true today.

The third of a series of books about great documents which have formed the basis of our American democracy, Dr. commager's newest book provides a valuable and illuminating commentary on a great historical event, the birth of the Great Constitution. Generously illustrated with reproductions of etchings and paintings of the period, this is a must for every bookshelf.

From the dust jacket