Science & Arts

A MACHINE THAT WOULD GO OF ITSELF

by Michael Kammen

Knopf; 532 pages; $29.95

Like any earthly matter, the Constitution has three forms: the solid text of the framers, the more fluid interpretation of the courts and a sort of glowing gas perceived by the public. That last Constitution, misquoted, rhapsodized over and construed to endorse the passions of the moment, is the subject of this imaginative book by a Pulitzer-prizewinning Cornell University historian, Michael Kammen. Kammen rummages through two centuries of sources, including news clippings, speeches, textbooks and public opinion polls, to gauge how Americans have regarded their own charter of government.

Among other things, he offers a timely reminder that debate over the intent of the framers began with the framers themselves. Consensus on the virtues of the Constitution was slow to build and subject to rupture over passionate issues such as slavery and workers' rights. In 1843 the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison termed the document a "Covenant with Death and an Agreement with Hell." Early in this century, historians like Charles Beard tried to brand its provisions the work of a privileged few seeking to defend their property. The document was not made, one Beard follower wrote, "by the kind of men whom we believe made it." But it was too late: Americans by that time had, for the most part, agreed to venerate the Constitution, if not always to read it, all the while squabbling over provisions they may not have glanced at since high school.

"TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY"

by Donald L. Robinson

Norton; 318 pages; $22.50

The separation of powers, often seen as one of the cardinal virtues of the U.S. system, is actually one of its most incapacitating flaws. So argues Donald L. Robinson, professor of government at Smith College, in this probing study of the presidency and the Constitution. In Robinson's view, Congress has yielded the President some of its power to define policies but has impeded his efforts to execute them. The result: chronic deadlock. A Government thus divided against itself, he writes, cannot stand up to such challenges as trillion-dollar debt and explosive foreign entanglements. His proposed remedies go beyond familiar ideas like repeal of the Constitution's prohibition against members of Congress serving in the Cabinet to far-out notions like the establishment of a council of "100 notable persons" chosen by the President to serve for life and review legislation.

A MORE PERFECT UNION

by William Peters

Crown; 294 pages; $22.50

For someone unfamiliar with the detailed story of the Constitution's birth, no book better combines the virtues of logical organization, responsible brevity and pleasant reading than A More Perfect Union. Though neither constitutional scholars nor well-read dilettantes are likely to discover previously hidden treasures here, they will find a uniquely clear guide that keeps an orderly hand on the chronology of the convention, as well as on the evolving roles of the principal actors.

Author William Peters, director of Yale University Films and a devotee of American history, adroitly links key points from the debates to relevant events that occurred years and even centuries later. Right after he quotes Virginia's crusty old George Mason growling, "I am against giving the power of war to the executive . . . I am for clogging, rather than facilitating, war," Peters shows the like mood of the Congress in 1973, when it passed the War Powers Resolution over President Richard Nixon's veto. He also has a nice eye for contemporary detail: to underscore the need for a Government that could keep peace between the states, Peters notes that a week into the convention, New Jersey spitefully put a tax on a lighthouse New York owned at Sandy Hook, N.J. By such means the author expands the reader's perspective on the adventure in Philadelphia and at the same time gives the document and the debates a timely resonance.

ARE WE TO BE A NATION?

by Richard B. Bernstein

with Kym S. Rice

Harvard University

342 pages; $35

To illuminate the making of the Constitution in pictures as well as words, this volume draws on the New York Public Library's Bicentennial exhibit, of which Author Richard B. Bernstein is co-curator. Amid a text that briskly sets forth the political, intellectual and cultural influences on the convention delegates are 19 color plates and 123 black-and-white illustrations of manuscripts, documents and prints. A rare woodcut of cherubs unveiling 13 upright columns reflects the idealism of the period, while in portraits, the purposeful gazes of the founders confirm the courage of those willing to say yes to nationhood.