We the People
We the People
Embedded Files
by Jill Lepore
Summary
Summary
The US Constitution has been amended only twenty-seven times since 1789, a number Jill Lepore treats not as evidence of stability but as a puzzle. We the People turns to Article V, the clause that lays out how the document can be changed, and follows it through more than two centuries of proposals that went nowhere: amendments for women's rights, for racial equality, for direct democracy, submitted and buried again and again.
Lepore's interest lies less in the amendments that passed than in the ones that did not, and in who kept proposing them. The pattern she traces is consistent: the groups most often shut out of the founding document are the same groups whose later attempts to fix it stalled in Congress or died in state legislatures. The result reframes the Constitution not as a settled inheritance but as an argument still underway about who counts as "we."
Discussion Guide
Discussion Guide
Download the full discussion guide (PDF) - Coming in October
Author's Resource
Author's Resource
The Amendments Project (TAP) is a fully searchable public digital archive of the full text of nearly every amendment to the U.S. Constitution proposed in Congress between 1789 and 2022. This served as the foundational resource for Lepore's book.
Videos
Videos
From Constitution Day September 17, 2025, Jill Lepore discusses the release of her new book.
Jill Lepore is interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Dialy Show (September 2025)
To honor the 250th anniversary of the United States, historian Heather Cox Richardson created a series of one-minute videos - stories of the many people, places, and events that have built our country and remind us of the power of each person to make history. Full list of 250 to 250 videos available on YouTube.
Below are: Constitutional Convention, narrated by Heather Cox Richardson and Shays' Rebellion, narrated by Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Author Event: Jill Lepore interviewed by Kate Shaw, professor of law at University of Pennsylvania Law School (September 2025).
Live from New York Public Library: Jill Lepore interviewed by Jamal Greene, professor of law at Columbia Law School (September 2025).
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse