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The lecture will focus on the subject of Pauline Maier's book, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788, which was published by Simon and Schuster in October 2010 and is the first narrative history of the process by which the Constitution's fate was decided, state by state, in specially elected conventions. Why, despite the existence of a full shelf of books on the federal Convention in Philadelphia, was this book not written long before? What's new? And--- last but not least--- why were the delegates from Maine (still, of course, a part of Massachusetts) so important at the Massachusetts ratifying convention?