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.

Amar’s fresh and fascinating history...elevates the importance of dialogue and debate in cementing American identity.

Amar (law and political science, Yale Univ.; America’s Unwritten Constitution) blends biographical narratives with constitutional analysis to consider the American Revolution, the Confederation years, the Constitutional Convention, and the early national period.

A page-turning doorstop history of how early American courts and politicians interpreted the Constitution.

The U.S. collectively talked and wrote its way into being, according to this dazzling constitutional history.