We the People
A History of the US Constitution
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- 149,00 kr
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY 2026
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2026
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025
LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION 2025
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A THE ECONOMIST, HISTORY TODAY, NEW YORK TIMES, NEW YORKER AND WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR
On the 250th anniversary of America's founding - a landmark history of the US Constitution for a troubling new era.
The US Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world - and one of the most difficult to amend. Although nearly twelve thousand amendments have been proposed since 1789, only twenty-seven have ever been ratified. Tellingly, the Constitution has not been meaningfully amended since 1971. Without amendment, the risk of political violence rises. So does the risk of constitutional change by presidential power.
Leading Harvard historian Jill Lepore captures the stories of generations of ordinary people who have attempted everything from abolishing the Electoral College to guaranteeing environmental rights, hoping to mend their nation. Recounting the history of America through centuries of efforts to realize the promise of the Constitution, we witness how nearly all those bids have failed.
We the People is the sweeping account of a struggle, arguing that the Constitution was never intended to be preserved, but was expected to be gradually altered. At a time when the risk of political violence is all too real, it hints at the prospects for a better, amended America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Control of the U.S. Constitution as a "living" and inevitably changing text has passed from the hands of the people to those of elites, argues bestselling historian Lepore (These Truths) in this stylish and clear-eyed study. For the nation's first 150 years, the process of amendment was the main path, she contends, by which the Constitution was reinterpreted. These changes would often come after periods of massive upheaval—12 amendments were passed after the Revolutionary War, three after the Civil War, seven after WWI—or following intense, sustained activism, like the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. From FDR's administration onward, however, politicians "abandoned constitutional amendment" in favor of "applying pressure on the Supreme Court"; as a result, Lepore asserts, the Constitution is still "changing all the time" via judicial decisions that are influenced by a select few elites in government and industry. Lepore's narrative tracks various amendments and state constitutions formed in the 19th and early 20th centuries in order to excavate how this shift happened, from the dispiriting failure of the Reconstruction amendments to the surprisingly outsized influence of a constitution formed by Native Americans in Oklahoma. Today, she writes, after the spectacular, prolonged failures of "lost amendments" like the ERA, amendment itself has come to be seen as a boondoggle. Citing mounting threats like climate change and authoritarianism, Lepore urges the public and legislators to seriously take up the cause of amendment once again. It's a galvanizing and paradigm-shifting take on America's slow descent into plutocracy.
