"Introduces young readers to primary sources related to the U.S. constitution"--

Americans revere the Constitution even as they argue fiercely over its original toleration of racial slavery. Some historians have charged that slaveholders actually enshrined human bondage at the nation's founding. Sean Wilentz shares the dismay but sees the Constitution and slavery differently. Although the proslavery side won important concessions, he asserts, antislavery impulses also influenced the framers' work. Far from covering up a crime...

Discusses the history of the writing of the United States Constitution.

"By the president of the prestigious Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, the life story of the most controversial, volatile, misunderstood provision of the Bill of Rights"--

A documentary of the American Revolution. Chronicles events leading up to the war, the revolution, and the writing of the Constitution. Features dramatic readings from letters and diaries of the period, comments by historians, and live-action recreations.

The story of what happened in Philadelphia in 1787 when the document was written that created our nation.

"The prizewinning author of Founding Brothers and American Sphinx now gives us the unexpected story--brilliantly told--of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew. The triumph of the American Revolution was neither an ideological nor political guarantee that the colonies would relinquish their independence and accept the creation of a federal...