Description: "In Born Equal, the prizewinning constitutional historian Akhil Reed Amar recounts the dramatic constitutional debates that unfolded across these eight decades, when four glorious amendments abolished slavery, secured Black and female citizenship, and extended suffrage regardless of race or gender. At the heart of this era was the epic and ever-evolving idea that all Americans are created equal. The promise of birth equality sat at the base of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. But in the nineteenth century, remarkable American women and men-especially Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln-elaborated a new vision of what this ideal demanded. Their debates played out from Seneca Falls to the halls of Congress, from Bloody Kansas to Gettysburg, from Ford's Theater to the White House gates, ultimately transforming the nation and the world"--
Review Quotes: "Akhil Amar's latest masterpiece... A magisterial ode to Americana, zeroing in on our foundational constitutional saga. At its core? The Declaration's audacious promise that all are created equal, a vow Mr. Amar excavates with the precision of an archaeologist and the flair of a storyteller.... Weaving together speeches, novels and even maps, he crafts a constitutional chronicle that's at once entertaining and deeply serious."--Neal Kaytal, Wall Street Journal