A review by editbarb
The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph J. Ellis

4.0

Ellis has written another concise, accessible book on this fascinating period of American history. The body of the book is only 200 pages, and in those pages, Ellis lays out the problems with the initial American Confederacy and the men who shaped the country. He emphasizes that these men are fallible, and highlights how different they were--and how they all were vital in the process of creating the American government. I particularly enjoyed learning more about Robert Morris and Gouverneur Morris; I knew very little of their contributions.

I highly recommend checking out this book about a little-discussed period. All too often it's just "The Articles of Confederation were problematic, so they held the Constitutional Convention, and then the Constitution was ratified." The story is an interesting one.