Constitution Day

Americans revere their Constitution. However, most of us are unaware how tumultuous and improbable the drafting and ratification processes were. Based on prodigious research and told largely through the voices of the participants, Michael Klarman's The Framers' Coup narrates how the Framers' clashing interests shaped the Constitution--and American history itself.

A classic in American constitutional history, Max Farrand's famous account of the Federal Convention presents a vivid analysis of the conditions, the convictions, and the men who framed the Constitution of the United States. This basic work clarifies the intentions of the Founding Fathers and sheds light on the many issues of 1787 that are of vital importance today.

Here in a newly annotated edition are the two founding documents of the United States of America: the Declaration of Independence (1776), our great revolutionary manifesto, and the Constitution (1787-88), in which We the People forged a new nation and built the framework for our federal republic. Together with the Bill of Rights and the Civil War amendments, these documents constitute what James Madison called our political scriptures and have come to define us as a people. Now a Pulitzer Prize winning historian serves as a guide to these texts, providing historical contexts and offering interpretive commentary. In an introductory essay written for the general reader, Jack N. Rakove provides a narrative political account of how these documents came to be written. In his commentary on the Declaration of Independence, Rakove sets the historical context for a fuller appreciation of the important preamble and the list of charges leveled against the Crown. When he glosses the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the subsequent amendments, Rakove once again provides helpful historical background, targets language that has proven particularly difficult or controversial, and cites leading Supreme Court cases. A chronology of events provides a framework for understanding the road to Philadelphia. The general reader will not find a better, more helpful guide to our founding documents than Jack N. Rakove.

The United States owes its identity as a nation to great events in history, and the most remarkable American symbols are rooted in these events. In easy-to-read language, the books in the American Symbols and Their Meanings series tell the stories of the symbols that are most important in American history.