Amending America: If We Love the Constitution So Much, Why Do We Keep Trying to Change It?

The story of how the Constitution has been reshaped over the past 200 years to meet America's changing needs. Since 1789, 27 amendments were adopted — creating the Bill of Rights, banning liquor, protecting the right to vote and reworking how we choose presidents and senators — and more than 10,000 failed. Proposed amendments tried to stave off the Civil War and then wrote its results into the Constitution.

"[A] thoughtful history of the Amendments to the Constitution... An excellent delinea...