The Best Books about the Constitution of the United States Available on Amazon
Your Ultimate Guide to the Best Books on the American Constitution and US Constitutional Era—
American History, Politics, and Perspectives for Readers of All Backgrounds
curated by Daniel J. Tortora, PhD
A photo showing the inside of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the US Constitution was drafted at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
Below you’ll find a range of perspectives and approaches to the history of the American Constitution—
from its origins, to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, to its framers (and even their wives), to the debates that took place in Philadelphia and during the ratification progress, to books focusing on biography, Christianity, slavery, and inequality, to the legacy of the Constitution
All the books below are Amazon books.
“We the People”: the first page of the Constitution of the United States.
Clicking on a book’s cover or title will take you to the book’s Amazon page. All quotes are from Amazon book descriptions.
For each book, I’ve added the available formats and editions (Kindle, Hardcover, Paperback, etc.)—and who I think would most like the book, such as the general public, liberal or progressive/Democrat readers, and conservative/Republican readers.
Each book on this list was published in the 2000s.
Whether you’re a member of the American general public, a student, graduate student, or academic, an attorney, an author, a history buff, a non-American, a liberal, progressive, conservative, or moderate,
there’s something for you on this list of books on the Constitution of the US.
⬇️ Scroll down for the list⬇️
Books on the US Constitution—Single Author
Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography (Random House, 2006)
Description: Written by a preeminent legal scholar, this “‘biography’ of America’s framing document explains not only what the Constitution says but also why the Constitution says it. . . . We see that the Constitution has been far more democratic than is conventionally understood. . . . We also learn that the Founders’ Constitution was far more slavocratic than many would acknowledge. . . . Ambitious, even-handed, eminently accessible, and often surprising, America’s Constitution” is meant for all but some prior knowledge is assumed.
Formats and editions: Kindle, Hardcover, Paperback
Best for: the general public with more than average history background; lawyers; political moderates; people looking for a longer book
Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (Random House, 2009)
Description: “Beeman captures as never before the dynamic of the debate and the characters of the men who labored that historic summer. Virtually all of the issues in dispute—the extent of presidential power, the nature of federalism, and, most explosive of all, the role of slavery—have continued to provoke conflict throughout our nation's history. This unprecedented book takes readers behind the scenes to show how the world's most enduring constitution was forged through conflict, compromise, and fragile consensus.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback
Best for: the general public
Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the Constitution (Harcourt, 2002)
Description: “Revisiting all the original historical documents of the period and drawing from her deep knowledge of eighteenth-century politics, Carol Berkin opens up the hearts and minds of America's founders, revealing the issues they faced, the times they lived in, and their humble expectations of success.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback, Audio CD
Best for: the general public
Jeff Broadwater, Jefferson, Madison, and the Making of the Constitution (The University of North Carolina Press, 2019)
Description: “Jeff Broadwater explores the evolution of the constitutional thought of these two seminal American figures, from the beginning of the American Revolution through the adoption of the Bill of Rights. In explaining how the two political compatriots could have produced such seemingly dissimilar documents but then come to a common constitutional ground, Broadwater reveals how their collaboration—and their disagreements—influenced the full range of constitutional questions during this early period of the American republic.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, Audio CD
Best for: the general public, people interested in Jefferson and Madison
Andrew H. Browning, Schools for Statesmen: The Divergent Educations of the Constitutional Framers (University Press of Kansas, 2022)
Description: “Schools for Statesmen explores the fifty-five individual Framers of the Constitution in close detail and argues that their different educations help explain their divergent positions at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. . . . It reveals the ways in which the Constitutional Convention, rather than being a counterrevolution by conservative elites, was dominated by forward-thinking innovators who had benefited from the educational revolution beginning in the mid-eighteenth century.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Hardcover
Best for: people interested in the education of the Framers, conservative America
Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic is the American Constitution? Second Edition (Yale University Press, 2003)
Description: “Robert Dahl explores [the] vital tension between the Americans’ belief in the legitimacy of their constitution and their belief in the principles of democracy. . . . Dahl highlights those elements of the American system that are most unusual and potentially antidemocratic: the federal system, the bicameral legislature, judicial review, presidentialism, and the electoral college system. . . . Dahl challenges us all to think critically about the origins of our political system and . . . creating a more democratic society.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback
Best for: liberal or progressive Americans
Joseph J. Ellis, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783–1789 (Knopf, 2015)
Description: “From Pulitzer Prize–winning American historian Joseph J. Ellis, the unexpected story of why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew” to a federal government. . . . The Quartet is the story of this second American founding and of the men most responsible—George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback, Audio CD
Best for: the general public; people who like reading biographies
Michael J. Faber, An Anti-Federalist Constitution: The Development of Dissent in the Ratification Debates (University Press of Kansas, 2019)
Description: By reconstructing [the arguments of the Anti-Federalists] and tracing their development through the ratification debates, Michael J. Faber presents an alternative perspective on constitutional history. . . . Faber identifies three distinct strands of political thought that eventually came together in a clear and coherent Anti-Federalism position,” and “goes on to tell the story of the resistance to the Constitution, focusing on ideas but also following and explaining events and strategies. Finally, he produces a “counterfactual” Anti-Federalist Constitution, summing up the Anti-Federalist position as it might have emerged had the opposition drafted the document.
Formats and editions: Kindle, Hardcover, Paperback
Best for: conservative Americans; people interested in counterfactual history
Lawrence Goldstone, Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits and the Struggle for the Constitution (Walker Books, 2005)
Description: “Goldstone chronicles the forging of the Constitution through the prism of the crucial compromises made by men consumed with the needs of the slave economy. As the daily debates and backroom conferences in inns and taverns stretched through July and August of that hot summer—and as the philosophical leadership of James Madison waned―Goldstone clearly reveals how tenuous the document was, and how an agreement between unlikely collaborators―John Rutledge of South Carolina, and Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut―got the delegates past their most difficult point. Dark Bargain recounts an event as dramatic and compelling as any in our nation's history.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback
Best for: liberal or progressive Americans; people interested in slavery in US history.
Mark David Hall, Did America Have a Christian Founding?: Separating Modern Myth from Historical Truth (Thomas Nelson, 2019)
Description: In this short book, Hall’s main argument is “that America's Founders were not deists; that they did not create a "godless" Constitution; . . . and that they embraced a robust understanding of religious liberty for biblical and theological reasons. In addition, Hall explains why and how the Founders' views are absolutely relevant today.” Hall seeks to “convince skeptics and equip believers and conservatives to defend the idea that Christian thought was crucial to the nation's founding—and that this benefits all of us, whatever our faith (or lack of faith).”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback, Audio CD
Best for: conservative Americans; Christians
Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (Hill and Wang, 2007)
Description: “Holton provides the startling discovery that the primary purpose of the Constitution was, simply put, to make America more attractive to investment. And the linchpin to that endeavor was taking power away from the states and ultimately away from the people. In an eye-opening interpretation of the Constitution, Holton captures how the same class of Americans that produced Shays’s Rebellion in Massachusetts (and rebellions in damn near every other state) produced the Constitution we now revere.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback
Best for: progressive Americans; graduate students and academics; people interested in learning about inequality in American history.
David L. Hudson Jr., The Constitution Explained: A Guide for Every American (Visible Ink Press, 2022)
Description: “Explore the history, the various clauses, amendments, and interpretations. Understand your rights (and responsibilities)! From the Constitutional Convention [‘The Miracle at Philadelphia’] to the creation of the Constitution and its eventual ratification, and to the Bill of Rights and the thorny constitutional issues of today, The Constitution Explained: A Guide for Every American covers the history, our founding fathers’ goals, and the varied interpretations of the Constitution that have informed the politics and functioning of the U.S. government. . . . Richly illustrated, it also has a helpful bibliography, glossary, and extensive index.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Hardcover, Paperback
Best for: the general public; law school students; people looking for a more comprehensive resource on the constitution and not just a history book; political moderates and conservatives
Michael J. Klarman, The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2016)
Description: “Based on prodigious research and told largely through the voices of the participants, Michael Klarman’s The Framers' Coup narrates how the Framers’ clashing interests shaped the Constitution—and American history itself.” The Constitution was the product of “rather ordinary interest group politics.” It was stacked in favor of The Federalists’ preferences. Klarman “explains why the Framers preferred such a constitution and how they managed to persuade the country to adopt it. We have lived with the consequences, both positive and negative, ever since.” [This is the longest book on the list and it was written by a law professor.]
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback
Best for: the general public; political moderates, people with time to read a long book.
Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788 (Simon & Schuster, 2010)
Description: “[W]inner of the George Washington Book Award, Ratification chronicles the pivotal moments and key figures in transforming the US Constitution from an idea into a transformational document and the Constitutional Convention into a working govern-ment. . . . [T]his is the first major history of ratification. . . . Each state’s experience was different, and Maier gives each its due even as she focuses on the four critical states of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, whose approval of the Constitution was crucial to its success.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback
Best for: the general public; people interested in ratification specifically
Janice E. McKenney, Women of the Constitution: Wives of the Signers (Scarecrow Press, 2012)
Description: A reference book; “the first new work devoted exclusively to brief biographies of the forty-three wives of the signers of the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787. Each entry includes vital information, where known—such as birth, parents, marriage, children, and death—as well as a footnoted biography with its own bibliography. Also provided are illustrations of many of the wives and their homes, as well as an appendix describing the now historic residences in which the signers and their spouses resided.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Hardcover, Paperback
Best for: the general public; people interested in women’s history; people who like reading biographies
David O. Stewart, The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution (Simon & Schuster, 2007)
Description: “The successful creation of the Constitution is a suspense story. The Summer of 1787 takes us into the sweltering room in which delegates struggled for four months to produce the flawed but enduring document that would define the nation—then and now. . . . The Summer of 1787 traces the struggles within the Philadelphia Convention as the delegates hammered out the charter for the world's first constitutional democracy. Relying on the words of the delegates themselves to explore the Convention's sharp conflicts and hard bargaining, David O. Stewart lays out the passions and contradictions of the often painful process of writing the Constitution” and introduces readers to the roles played by James Madison, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, Edmund Randolph—and others largely forgotten.
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover, Paperback, Audio CD
Best for: the general public; students
David Waldstreicher, Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification (Hill and Wang, 2010)
Description: “Taking on decades of received wisdom, David Waldstreicher has written the first book to recognize slavery's place at the heart of the U.S. Constitution. Famously, the Constitution never mentions slavery. And yet, of its eighty-four clauses, six were directly concerned with slaves and the interests of their owners. Five other clauses had implications for slavery that were considered and debated by the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the citizens of the states during ratification. . . . Slavery was as important to the making of the Constitution as the Constitution was to the survival of slavery. . . . Waldstreicher rigorously shows that slavery was not only actively discussed behind the closed and locked doors of the Constitutional Convention, but that it was also deftly woven into the Constitution itself.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Hardcover, Paperback
Best for: liberal and progressive Americans; people looking for a quick read; students; people interested in the history of slavery in America
Gordon S. Wood, Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Description: “[E]minent historian Gordon S. Wood . . . illuminates critical events in the nation's founding, ranging from the imperial debate that led to the Declaration of Independence to the revolutionary state constitution making in 1776 and the creation of the Federal Constitution in 1787. Among other topics, he discusses slavery and constitutionalism, the emergence of the judiciary as one of the major tripartite institutions of government, the demarcation between public and private, and the formation of states' rights. Here is an immensely readable synthesis of the key era in the making of the history of the United States, presenting timely insights on the Constitution and the nation’s foundational legal and political documents.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Hardcover
Best for: the general public; people looking to understand the American origins of the Constitution
Melvin Yazawa, Contested Conventions: The Struggle to Establish the Constitution and Save the Union, 1787–1789 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016)
Description: “Treating the 1787–1789 period as a whole, the book highlights the contingent nature of the struggle to establish the Constitution and brings into focus the overriding concern of the framers and ratifiers, who struggled to counter what Alexander Hamilton identified as the “centrifugal” forces driving Americans toward a disastrous disunion. This concern inspired the delegates in Philadelphia to resolve through compromise the two most divisive confrontations of the Constitutional Convention―representation in the new Congress and slavery―and was instrumental in gaining ratification even in states where Antifederalist delegates comprised a substantial majority. . . . Yazawa illuminates the nature of the crisis that necessitated the meeting at Philadelphia in the first place.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Paperback
Best for: students; people interested in ratification
Books on the US Constitution—Edited Volumes and Documents
Robert J. Allison and Bernard Bailyn, eds., The Essential Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches and Writings (Library of America, 2018)
Description: This book is a collection of documents from the debates that resulted from the Constitution the Framers had made. “Here, in chronological order, are more than sixty newspaper articles, pamphlets, speeches, and private letters written or delivered during this ratification debate.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Paperback
Best for: people who want access the original documents; people interested in The Federalist Papers.
Richard Beeman, ed., The Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution: A Fully Annotated Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and Amendments, and Selections from The Federalist Papers (Penguin, 2010)
Description: Here readers will find “a compact, fully annotated copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and amendments, all in their entirety.”
Formats and editions: Paperback
Best for: people who want access the original documents; people interested in The Federalist Papers.
Ralph Ketcham, ed., The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates (Signet, 2003)
Description: “This volume includes the complete texts of the Anti-Federalist Papers and Constitutional Convention debates, commentaries, and an Index of Ideas. It also lists cross-references to its companion volume, The Federalist Papers, available in a Signet Classic edition.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Audiobook, Library Binding, Paperback, Mass Market Paperback
Best for: understanding the opposition to the US Constitution at the time it was created and ratified.
Ray Raphael, ed., The U.S. Constitution: Explained—Clause by Clause—for Every American Today (Vintage, 2017)
Description: “Ray Raphael guides us through the origins, impact, and current relevance of the original text and all twenty-seven amendments. Here is the key historical context for issues in the news today—from the Electoral College to Washington gridlock, from peaceful protests to executive power.”
Formats and editions: Kindle, Paperback
Best for: the general public; understanding the legacy of the Constitution, liberal Americans.
A note about finding new Amazon books on the US Constitution
It can be tricky to browse for new books on Amazon.
Amazon’s browse path “American Revolution and Founding” lumps books on the Constitutional Era, US Constitution, Ratification, Framers, etc., with books on the American Revolution and Revolutionary Era.
Browse “Revolution and Founding” Audiobooks | released in the past 90 days
Browse “Revolution and Founding” Kindle Books | released in the past 90 days | on Kindle Unlimited
Browse “Revolution and Founding” Hardcover and Paperback Books | released in the past 90 days
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