We the People: America Forgot How to Change Its Constitution

The Book Brief Project · Aug 26, 2026 · 15m

We the People begins with an idea that challenges the way many Americans are taught to think about the Constitution: Jill Lepore argues that amendment was not an accidental escape hatch in the document but a central part of its design — a mechanism through which later generations could repair rules inherited from the past.Across American history, thousands of constitutional amendments have been proposed and twenty-seven have been ratified. Lepore follows both the amendments that succeeded and the far larger archive of those that failed, using them as a record of what different generations…