Previous title: 1789: the year that launched America

Prologue: Eleven states create a nation -- The great cause -- The specter of a king -- The reluctant president -- Out with the old -- A new government awakens -- "Now a king" -- Etiquette advice for the president -- "All is bare creation" -- The constitution as blueprint -- Counting we the people -- America's "other persons" -- A tub full of rights -- "He shall have power" -- Stricken Washington, fearful nation -- Washington gets a Bastille key -- Seeing America's farms and factories -- Many pirates -- and no navy -- The second session: Hope and angst -- On the frontier, spies and plots -- Toward an American language -- Epilogue: in rising glory -- Appendices: The "correct" constitution of the United States; Inside the dozen: The Bill of Rights; A timeline of the founding of the United States and the federal government

"In 1789, the federal government described in the recently ratified U.S. Constitution came into being. Drawing on hundreds of sources to paint a vivid portrait of the new nation, veteran journalist Thomas B. Allen tells the long-hidden history of how George Washington and the other Founders set this new federal government into motion"--