Menu
The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840
Top of the pile
86
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
93/100Critics
80/100Scholars
Author:
Akhil Reed Amar
Publisher:
Basic Books
Date:
May 4, 2021
When the US Constitution won popular approval in 1788, it was the culmination of thirty years of passionate argument over the nature of government. But ratification hardly ended the conversation. For the next half century, ordinary Americans and statesmen alike continued to wrestle with weighty questions in the halls of government and in the pages of newspapers. Should the nation's borders be expanded? Should America allow slavery to spread westward? What rights should Indian nations hold? What was the proper role of the judicial branch? In The Words that Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered.
What The Reviewers Say
Amar criticizes Adams, Madison, Jefferson, Calhoun, and Jackson, among other leading politicians, and stakes out a distinctive position among the Constitution’s many interpreters. This alone justifies the book.
Amar explores this territory brilliantly in The Words That Made Us, his deeply probing, highly readable study of “America’s constitutional conversation” from 1760 to 1840.
... the rarest of things — a constitutional romance. Amar, an eminent professor of law and political science at Yale, has great affection for his subject as a text that is worthy of loving engagement by scholars and the public at large.
... fascinating.
