What We Are Reading Today: We the People by Jill Lepore

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Updated 08 October 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: We the People by Jill Lepore

In “We the People,” Harvard professor of history and law Jill Lepore offers a sweeping, lyrical, and democratic constitutional history, telling the stories of generations of Americans who have attempted everything from abolishing the Electoral College to guaranteeing environmental rights.

Lepore argues that the framers never intended for the Constitution to be kept, like a butterfly, under glass, but instead expected that future generations would be forever tinkering with it, improving the machinery of government.