Just read back on this a few pages, and somehow I've only now noticed that MaxBigfoot seems to be a Tamora Pierce fan. Tamora turns up pretty regularly at the Pittsburgh SF convention, being held this year, just like before, in late July.
Bought my Dad a book, but had fun reading it myself first. Plain, Honest Men by Richard Beeman. A timeline of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, complete with a sense of place and some handy biographies of men I might otherwise never hear about. James Wilson, who comes across as meek in that "1776" play, proves to be very visionary. Some intriguing details, like a mob killing a widow named Korbmacher just a few blocks away on suspicion of witchcraft. Wild to think that if Washington hadn't been there, barely ever saying anything but simply lending his gravitas to the occasion, we might have gone with a multiple executive, a more British parliamentary system. Reading it, I have to agree with Jefferson, the Constitution ain't no ark of the covenant.
Today marks the 224th anniversary of Hamilton arguing that we should do away with state governments and invest extraordinary powers in an "elected monarch." Our Electoral College is a holdover from this sort of dogged post-imperial refusal to simply trust the people.