We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution

We the People by Jill Lepore is a New York Times bestseller and longlisted for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. From the acclaimed author of These Truths, this book offers a groundbreaking history of the U.S. Constitution, published on the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.

Jill Lepore, Harvard professor of history and law, provides a deeply original examination of the Constitution—explaining its origins, the challenges of amendment, and the extraordinary efforts by ordinary Americans to realize its promises. Despite nearly twelve thousand proposed amendments since 1789, only twenty-seven have been ratified, with the last meaningful amendment in 1971. Lepore warns that without the ability to amend the Constitution, the risks of political violence and unilateral changes by the presidency or judiciary increase.

Highlights of We the People:

• An exploration of the Constitution’s founding purpose: to prevent change while allowing orderly adaptation without violence
• A critique of “originalism” and the Supreme Court’s monopoly on constitutional interpretation
• A rich history of amendment efforts, successes, and failures, drawn from Lepore’s extensive Amendments Project database
• Insights into how the framers intended future generations to actively shape and improve the Constitution
• 90 black-and-white illustrations illuminating key moments in American constitutional history

Congressman Jamie Raskin praises Lepore’s work as “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.”

We the People is both a masterful history and a call to engage with the Constitution as a living document, offering hope for a better, amended America.

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