Pauline Maier
Pauline Maier
Pauline Maier was born on May 27, 1939, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was a distinguished American historian and professor renowned for her expertise in American history and constitutional development. Maier's engaging scholarship and dedication to educating the public have left a lasting impact on the study of American history.
Personal Name: Pauline Maier
Birth: 1938
Pauline Maier Books
(3 Books)
The dramatic story of the debate over the ratification of the Constitution, the first new account of this seminal moment in American history in years.
Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly "American Scripture," and Maier tells us how it came to be - from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the nineteenth century, the document itself became sanctified.
Maier describes the transformation of the Second Continental Congress into a national government, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, and with more authority than the colonists would ever have conceded to the British Parliament; the great difficulty in making the decision for Independence; the influence of Paine's Common Sense, which shifted the terms of debate; and the political maneuvers that allowed Congress to make the momentous decision.