The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution » (Reprint)

Now in paperback: an entertaining and informative look at America's most important historical document, from an award-winning journalist.

The United States Constitution is the basis for our most fundamental rights as Americans, and is a key element in nearly every major legal and political debate ever argued. But how many of us actually understand the language used by our Founding Fathers?

Now Linda R. Monk, an award-winning author and journalist, takes us through the Constitution, line by line, to help us comprehend this amazing document. From the Preamble, which she analyzes with inspiration from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Charlton Heston, and James Madison, to each and every amendment, Monk offers insight, legal expertise, surprising facts and trivia, opposing interpretations, and historical anecdotes to breathe life into this provocative and hallowed document.

Linda R. Monk received the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award twice for her book The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide, and for her work on the documentary Profiles of Freedom: A Living Bill of Rights. A graduate of Harvard Law School, she is a frequent contributor to newspapers nationwide. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Publishers Weekly

The U.S. Constitution gets a comprehensive overview in this engaging blend of history and commentary. Monk, author of The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide, traces the history and consequences of each part of this vital document in a line-by-line analysis of the original seven articles and the 27 amendments. Drawing on the writings of constitutional scholars, Supreme Court Justices and concerned citizens like Charlton Heston, playwright Arthur Miller and rock star Ted Nugent, she also gives even-handed but lively accounts of the debates over such Constitutional controversies as the right to bear arms, the right to privacy, church-state separation and capital punishment. The portrait of the Constitution that emerges is a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. Some parts, like the Civil War amendments that defined citizenship and equality in granting them to African-Americans, are terse milestones in our evolving understanding of freedom, while elsewhere the Constitution seems like a scratch-pad for ill-considered ideas like the hastily repealed Prohibition Amendment. Monk avoids comparisons with other countries' charters that might have illuminated the Constitution's idiosyncrasies, and skirts deeper critiques, like Daniel Lazare's argument that the Constitution's overall structure of states' rights, separation of powers and checks and balances hobbles rather than effectuates the will of the people. Still, this is a fine introduction to Constitutional history for a general readership laid out rather like a good social studies textbook. Illus. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.