Jill Lepore stopped by the Daily Show to discuss her latest book, We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution.
Lepore’s book, published earlier this month by Liveright/Norton, is a history of the United States Constitution, which was ratified in 1788 and went into effect the following year. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “With the Constitution under daily threat, Lepore’s outstanding book makes for urgent reading.”
Daily Show host Jon Stewart dramatically dropped a copy of the 768-page book on his desk and said, “What are you trying to do to me?...I’m an old man. I had to pore over this with a magnifying glass and a microscope just to be able to see, and I only got up to Reconstruction.” He then complained that Lepore’s writing was so good that he “actually had to pay attention.”
“I’m really sorry,” Lepore said. “I could do an alternate account that’s just the dry version.”
Stewart pointed out that the writers of the Constitution put the amendment process in place because they realized the document would have to be changed.
“I hadn’t thought that much, honestly, about amendments,” Lepore said. “To the degree that I had a kind of history of the Constitution in my mind, it's really a succession of Supreme Court cases.…But when I went back and did this research, the philosophy of amendment, the idea that we can make our lives and our government better and more responsive to the needs of the people, is actually the foundational principle of written constitutionalism.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
