ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, New Yorker, Smithsonian,Bookpage, and the Chicago Public Library
Longlisted for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
"[Lepore's] 15th book, We the People, a history of the U.S. Constitution, may be her best yet, a capacious work that lands at the right moment, like a life buoy, as our ship of state takes on water." —Hamilton Cain, Los Angeles Times
From the best-selling author of These Truths comes We the People, a stunning new history of the U.S. Constitution, for a troubling new era.
The U.S. Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world but also one of the most difficult to amend. Jill Lepore, Harvard professor of history and law, explains why in We the People, the most original history of the Constitution in decades—and an essential companion to her landmark history of the United States, These Truths.
Published on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding—the anniversary, too, of the first state constitutions—We the People offers a wholly new history of the Constitution. “One of the Constitution’s founding purposes was to prevent change,” Lepore writes. “Another was to allow for change without violence.” Relying on the extraordinary database she has assembled at the Amendments Project, Lepore recounts centuries of attempts, mostly by ordinary Americans, to realize the promise of the Constitution. Yet nearly all those efforts have failed. Although nearly twelve thousand amendments have been introduced in Congress since 1789, and thousands more have been proposed outside its doors, only twenty-seven have ever been ratified. More troubling, the Constitution has not been meaningfully amended since 1971. Without recourse to amendment, she argues, the risk of political violence rises. So does the risk of constitutional change by presidential or judicial fiat.
Challenging both the Supreme Court’s monopoly on constitutional interpretation and the flawed theory of “originalism,” Lepore contends in this “gripping and unfamiliar story of our own past” that the philosophy of amendment is foundational to American constitutionalism. The framers never intended for the Constitution to be preserved, like a butterfly, under glass, Lepore argues, but expected that future generations would be forever tinkering with it, hoping to mend America by amending its Constitution through an orderly deliberative and democratic process.
Lepore’s remarkable history seeks, too, to rekindle a sense of constitutional possibility. Congressman Jamie Raskin writes that Lepore “has thrown us a lifeline, a way of seeing the Constitution neither as an authoritarian straitjacket nor a foolproof magic amulet but as the arena of fierce, logical, passionate, and often deadly struggle for a more perfect union.” At a time when the Constitution’s vulnerability is all too evident, and the risk of political violence all too real, We the People, with its shimmering prose and pioneering research, hints at the prospects for a better constitutional future, an amended America.
About the Author
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and professor of law at Harvard Law School. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her many books include the international bestseller These Truths: A History of the United States. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Praise For…
As the Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore explains in We the People, her startling and innovative recasting of Americans’ intermittently successful, but now increasingly futile, efforts to change the country’s basic laws, the struggle over the E.R.A. is just one recent eddy in a long current of discontent with the U.S. Constitution and its forebears....While her account touches on these familiar landmarks, it also decenters them, drawing attention instead to the repeated attempts to enlarge what was meant by “People” in the country’s most foundational laws.... Each of her book’s 13 chapters offers a vivid portrait of mostly unfamiliar voices of constitutional demurral from this archive and beyond.... Left hanging in the air at the end of this rewarding book is a dark question: At what cost have we abandoned amendment? — Aziz Z. Huq - New York Times Book Review
In We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution, Jill Lepore, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, cites these and other examples to convincingly argue that a sclerotic Constitution has made it nearly impossible for the nation to tackle deeply entrenched problems.... Making extensive use of the Amendments Project, Lepore’s archive of every major proposed amendment, We the People is most illuminating when it unearths long-ignored but prescient provisions that sprang from groups excluded from the body politic.... We the People makes a compelling case for the need to institute constitutional reforms and steer away from a system heavily reliant on the actions of a hyper-politicized Supreme Court. — Michael Bobelian - Washington Post
Her 15th book, We the People, a history of the U.S. Constitution, may be her best yet, a capacious work that lands at the right moment, like a life buoy, as our ship of state takes on water…. With We the People, Lepore has composed a companion piece to These Truths, her 2018 dash across U.S. history, but her latest work is the stronger book by an order of magnitude…. Lepore senses peril but also a whiff of democratic revival. Asymmetries lie at the foundation of our government; as this gifted scholar reminds us, it’s our duty to tend to them. — Hamilton Cain - Los Angeles Times
A new Lepore book is big news. In 2018 she enjoyed bestselling success with These Truths, an inclusive American history. We the People looks and reads like a sequel.... We the People contains compelling accounts of the constitutional convention, the road to ratification, the Reconstruction amendments after the civil war, the 19th amendment securing votes for women, the rise of the reactionary right and the slow death of the amendment process.... As ever, Lepore writes with literary flair, offering striking character studies, often of Americans who fought for change but are now largely forgotten. — Martin Pengelly - The Guardian
To build a durable foundation for a house, you'll want to use the kinds of materials that resist change — concrete, say, or steel rebar. But a foundation for a country is another beast entirely. In Lepore's latest book, a hefty volume heavy on historical detail, the Harvard professor and New Yorker staff writer makes the timely case that the strength and stability of America's founding document, particularly in times of great stress, reside first and foremost in its capacity for adaptation. — Colin Dwyer - NPR
Lepore’s sweeping, urgent history – which begins in the Revolutionary era and concludes in our current moment – focuses on amendment as a tool to realize the Constitution’s promise. But given that the Constitution hasn’t been meaningfully amended since 1971, the book also issues a warning: that political violence and authoritarianism are more likely when our founding charter is unable to evolve with the times. — Barbara Spindel - Christian Science Monitor
In her characteristically lively history of the U.S. Constitution, Lepore argues that the document’s capacity for amendment was not only central to the founders’ political thinking but essential to its ratification.... Lepore’s passionate denunciation of this theory of constitutional interpretation paints it as one of the “stranger paradoxes” of American constitutional history. — Jessica T. Mathews - Foreign Affairs
An arresting chronicle of Americans striving—if sometimes failing—to remake their republic. — The Economist
One of the year’s most engaging reads, an epic profile of the strange, often contradictory life and interpretation of the document guiding this nation. — Christopher Borelli - Chicago Tribune
Lepore, who is also a staff writer at The New Yorker, opts to tell the constitution through the stories of a much wider variety of Americans.... Among the most vivid characters are the last queen of Hawaii, Lili?uokalani, who oversaw her islands’ first constitution, and Charles Beard, who reshaped public opinion in the 1910s by claiming that the US constitution’s authors were economically motivated.... Lepore worries that the US government as we know it may be facing a final end game. She asks, 'How long can or should a constitution last?'... Today, as a fight rages over the balance of power among the president, Congress, the court and what used to be known as the independent agencies, this is far from an academic question. — Brooke Masters - Financial Times
The noted historian advances the cause of an aggressively, and progressively, malleable set of rules for government . . . With the Constitution under daily threat, Lepore’s outstanding book makes for urgent reading. — Kirkus Reviews, starred review
[A] galvanizing and paradigm-shifting take on America’s slow descent into plutocracy. — Publishers Weekly, starred review
A comprehensive, inclusive history of the creation of the United States Constitution and its subsequent journey as an amendable document. Lepore mostly discusses the document’s revision, updating, and improvement, which keeps the narrative focused. The research presents a refreshing context for the political battles that propel amendments forward; the rights of women, enslaved people, and Confederates are handled with equal care. The section showcasing the history of Hawai‘i feels revelatory, as it’s not usually included in conversations about the Constitution. The definitions for understanding the difference between a federalist versus an antifederalist are clear, and the definitive tone carries through the coverage of suffrage, changes for child labor, and the influence of Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade. The charts listing when amendments were proposed and by whom is a concise way to understand each era being examined. The history of the Equal Rights Amendment and FDR’s attempts to restructure the Supreme Court will be of keen interest to modern readers. Essential reading for all Americans; a great fit for public library collections. — Tina Panik, Library Journal, starred review
It is impossible to imagine a more instructive text on a more timely subject by a more accomplished historian. — Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny
Not only an historian with prodigious powers of original research and integrative genius, not only a spellbinding writer with a golden pen, Jill Lepore is a preacher at an open-air American revival meeting: she will tell you a gripping and unfamiliar story of our own past that destroys your complacency and makes you reimagine what is possible for the secular miracle that is America. — Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-8th District), ranking member, U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee
In this remarkably engaging and deeply researched work, one of America’s most important living historians illuminates the most vital quality of our Constitution: its capacity for renewal. — Pete Buttigieg, former United States Secretary of Transportation
Jill Lepore’s lyrical journey through the history of the Constitution brings its eminently amendable state to life in vivid and inspiring detail and delivers it to us, the living, for further repairs and improvements. — Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor, Harvard, and author of Justice by Means of Democracy
An extraordinary and inspiring achievement. Lepore offers a whole new understanding of constitutional change. It’s a triumph of the head and the heart. — Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard Law School, and author of How to Interpret the Constitution
A pulsating, at times astonishing journey through Americans’ never-ending efforts to form a more perfect union. We the People is essential reading for anyone who cares about self-government under the Constitution. — Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law, Columbia Law School, and author of How Rights Went Wrong
