Madisons Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention

Winner of the Bancroft Prize
Winner of the James Bradford Best Biography Prize, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic
Finalist, Literary Award for Nonfiction, Library of Virginia
Finalist, George Washington Prize

James Madisons Notes on the 1787 Constitutional Convention have acquired nearly unquestioned authority as the description of the U.S. Constitutions creation. No document provides a more complete record of the deliberations in Philadelphia or depicts the Conventions charismatic figures, crushing disappointments, and miraculous triumphs with such narrative force. But how reliable is this account?

[A] superb study of the Constitutional Convention as selectively reflected in Madisons voluminous notes on itScholars have been aware that Madison made revisions in the Notes but have not intensively explored them. Bilder has looked closely indeed at the Notes and at his revisions, and the result is this lucid, subtle book. It will be impossible to view Madisons role at the convention and read his Notes in the same uncomplicated way againAn accessible and brilliant rethinking of a crucial moment in American history.
Robert K. Landers, Wall Street Journal