Review
Widely compared to Catherine Drinker
Bowen's
Miracle at Philadelphia (1966), considered
by many to be the classic work on the American
constitution,
The Summer of 1787's
fly-on-the-wall narrative style stands up to the
comparison in the opinion of most reviewers.
Like Bowen, Stewart focuses solely on the four
summer months during which the bulk of the
Constitution was framed and does not cover the State
ratification process or the first Federal Congress,
which established a number of elements including The
Bill of Rights. A couple of reviewers point to this
as a limitation of
The Summer of 1787, but
this reviewer thinks that Stewart is right to focus
on just these four sweltering months....
Beyond the Book
David O'Stewart has been
a trial lawyer for twenty-five
years. He began writing before
law school as a reporter for the
Staten Island Advance. He also
wrote a monthly column on the
Supreme Court for the American
Bar Association Journal for
almost ten years. In recent
years he has turned to fiction,
publishing a short story,
When They Did It, in New
Millennium Writings that was
nominated for the Pushcart
Prize. He has recently completed
a novel, as yet unpublished, and
is working on a follow-up to
The Summer of 1787 that...
