Denise Kiernan and Joseph D’Agnese. Signing Their Rights Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the United States Constitution. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2011. 256 pages.
As one of the foundation documents of the American Republic, the Constitution is an object of respect bordering on reverence. For the past 222 years it’s formed the basis of the government of the United States. It has an aura of timelessness about it, as if it miraculously appeared as a gift from on high.
Yet the Constitution was written by mere mortals, sweltering in a Philadelphia summer. Many of them acknowledged that what they’d created was imperfect, but it was the best they could hope for. SIGNING THEIR RIGHTS AWAY gives contemporary readers some insight into the men who argued and compromised in 1787 and created the Constitution.
The book starts with a brief introduction that recaps the circumstances surrounding the Constitutional Convention and provides the backdrop for the rest of the book: a series of short portraits of the 39 men who signed the Constitution. Grouped by state, these brief (3-4 page) bios are informative and occasionally cheeky–more than a few signers were touched by scandal at one point or another.
It’s a challenge to find as much to say about Richard Dobbs Spaight as Benjamin Franklin, but the authors do a fine job of making each signer interesting. It’s not a narrative history of the Constitutional Convention, but SIGNING THEIR RIGHTS AWAY gives the reader, along the way, plenty of interesting details about the process to pique the reader’s interest and hopefully inspire more reading about this crucial point in American history.
All in all, SIGNING THEIR RIGHTS AWAY is a quick and thought-provoking read. It might not be the best cover-to-cover reading experience since it lacks a driving narrative, but its structure makes it ideal for reading in short bursts or as a handy reference.