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We the People

by Jill Lepore (Liveright)

Nonfiction

This lively and sweeping work of scholarship examines the U.S. Constitution through the history of its amendment. Sometimes drawing on work that appeared in the magazine, Lepore argues that amendment was meant to be an alternative to revolution, yet it has all but vanished since 1971. Meanwhile, the doctrine of originalism has taken hold, binding Americans not to a living covenant but to a barren conception of a less democratic past. Lepore writes with characteristic range, moving from Jefferson’s suspicion of constitutional sanctimony to the “constitutional junk yard” of failed amendments, glorious and inglorious alike.

-From The New Yorker