Akhil Reed Amar recounts the dramatic constitutional debates that unfolded across these eight decades, when four glorious amendments abolished slavery, secured Black and female citizenship, and extended suffrage regardless of race or gender. At the heart of this era was the epic and ever-evolving idea that all Americans are created equal. The promise of birth equality sat at the base of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. But in the nineteenth century, remarkable American women and men-especially Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln-elaborated a new vision of what this ideal demanded. Their debates played out from Seneca Falls to the halls of Congress, from Bloody Kansas to Gettysburg, from Ford's Theater to the White House gates, ultimately transforming the nation and the world.
Learned and long but never dry; it is, if anything, strenuously chatty. The historical set pieces have punch, and Amar imbues figures like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe with humanity and immediacy. Yet there is a feeling throughout of the lecturer playing to the back of the hall ... Digressive ... The complexities of 19th-century politics and, it appears, the capaciousness of Amar’s interests lead him afield from his central story line.
