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Born Equal
Remaking America’s Constitution, 1840–1920
Contributors
Formats and Prices
- On Sale
- Sep 16, 2025
- Page Count
- 736 pages
- Publisher
- Basic Books
- ISBN-13
- 9781541605190
Price
$40.00Price
$50.00 CADFormat
Format:
- Hardcover $40.00 $50.00 CAD
- ebook $22.99 $29.99 CAD
- Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $44.99
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In 1840, millions of Black Americans groaned in the chains of slavery. By 1920, millions of American men and women of every race had won the vote.
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.
An ambitious narrative history and a penetrating work of legal and political analysis, Born Equal is a vital new portrait of America’s winding road toward equality.
Genre:
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“Akhil Reed Amar is the most accomplished scholar of his age cohort in both law and history because he writes superb books like Born Equal, which will change the minds of everyone across the political spectrum from Federalist Society members to Bernie Sanders leftists. The history told in this book goes to the very core of what it means to be an American citizen and to understanding our Constitution. Amar knows, that for all our faults, the United States is, as President Ronald Reagan called it, ‘A Shining City on a Hill.’ This book brilliantly proves that Ronald Reagan was right! Born Equal is one of the most important books ever written.”Steven Gow Calabresi, Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
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