WE THE PEOPLE

Using simplified language, as the original is replete with “old-fashioned terms and some of the loooooongest sentences you will ever see,” the authors go over select parts of each article and amendment in turn. Along with blowing off originalists by characterizing the document as designed “to be reinterpreted and revised over time as our society evolves,” they point to ways racial and gender inequities, beginning with enslavement, have so often been “silently woven between the lines” and caution readers to be wary of historical “whitewashing.” They also profile notable reformers, women who have served in Congress and/or run for president, and hot-button issues such as gun control and abortion rights. Budding political activists are encouraged at the close to get involved: “Power is fun!” Lewis populates the pages with mixes of stylized individual portraits and thoroughly diversified clusters of small figures waving protest signs, marching, or, like a rainbow row of women celebrating the 19th Amendment and the biracial couple raising glasses at Prohibition’s repeal, posing in triumph. Occasional bobbles notwithstanding—the Federalist Party was hardly “the nation’s financial system,” Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation did not “end slavery,” and it’s not 100% true that “police shootings of Black people…continue unchecked”—this view of the foundational document of our national system is both nuanced and reasonably easy to understand.

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