The Words We Live By

Your Annotated Guide To the Constitution

By Linda R. Monk

The Words We Live By is designed to give Americans the balanced and accessible information they need to more fully understand the nation’s charter. It is a distilled overview of the historical background, legal analysis, and current controversies of the Constitution. Using the metaphor of the Constitution as a conversation, The Words We Live By is filled with quotes by Americans of wide-ranging views from all walks of life.

America’s conversation about liberty included women and men of all classes, races, and religions—enslaved and free. The slaves of Massachusetts petitioned for their “unalienable right to freedom” in 1777 with words echoing the Declaration of Independence. White men without property sought the right to vote. The Cherokee Nation, although deprived of its land, believed that American Indians should be protected under the Constitution. Women argued that they, too, were included in “We the People.”

The Words We Live By includes the voices of America’s founders and fanatics, of Supreme Court justices and civil rights workers. Among this cacophony are rock star Ted Nugent, first-grader Ruby Bridges, actor Charlton Heston, gay rights activist Michael Hardwick, ex-con Clarence Earl Gideon, and pro-life protester Norma McCorvey.

These stories prove that the Constitution is not self-enforcing and depends upon citizens for its support. As Judge Learned Hand emphasized during World War II: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.”

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The Bill of Rights:

A User’s Guide, 4th ed.

By Linda R. Monk
The Bill of Rights: A User’s Guide explores our Constitution’s first ten amendments and their resilience through time. This award-winning text includes the historical background of the amendments and the rights granted therein, along with a study of the Fourteenth Amendment. Profiles and legal analyses of the Supreme Court cases that have interpreted and upheld these basic human rights are also featured, along with the stories of the ordinary people behind the cases. The book includes a foreword by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Bill of Rights: A User’s Guide is a winner of the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, its highest honor for law-related media.

Ordinary Americans:

U.S. History Through the Eyes of Everyday People, 2nd edition

By Linda R. Monk

“This is the way history should be told,” says PBS filmmaker Ken Burns of this collection of nearly 200 first-person accounts by everyday people. Ordinary Americans tells history as the average American actually lived it, covering 500 years of U.S. history from a bottom-up rather than a top-down perspective. Drawn from letters, diaries, autobiographical accounts, and interviews, these Americans’ stories are funny, moving, exasperating, often inspiring. They’re not just about what happened, but how real people felt about what happened.

Here you will meet former slave Olaudah Equiano, who described the passage from Africa to America; Cherokee leader Dragging Canoe, who prophesied his tribe’s removal from their lands; cobbler George Hewes, who participated in the Boston Tea Party; Iowa bride Catherine Haun, who crossed the Great Plains during the gold rush; African-American seamstress Elizabeth Keckley, who viewed Lincoln’s reactions to his son’s enlistment during the Civil War; Cheyenne tribeswoman Kate Bighead, who witnessed Custer’s last stand; sailor Stephen Bower Young, who was trapped in his ship during the bombing of Pearl Harbor; Japanese-American Mary Tsukamoto, who was interned during World War II; nine-year-old Sheyann Webb, who marched for civil rights at Selma; helicopter pilot Robert Mason, who flew rescue missions in Vietnam; United Farmworker Jessie Lopez de la Cruz, who organized her comrades in the fields; and many, many more.

The newly updated version of this bestseller moves into the twenty-first century with insights on Bosnia, the Starr grand jury, Oklahoma City, and the September 11th attacks through the eyes of people who participated in these historical events.