The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution

This book was a real eye opener for me. Separation of Church and State does not mean what everyone thinks it means. What the government wants you to believe is that any mention of biblical beliefs and morality should be written out of our Constitution including the buildings. That is not what the founding fathers meant. What it means is that government shall not endorse any one religion as the religion of the land and require everyone to follow that religion. As far as I know, the people of North America, known as the United States, have never required anyone to belong to any one religion. There are a lot of different religions in this nation and they are all allowed to worship as they see fit. There is only one religion in this nation that would require American citizens to worship their way and it appears that our present government agrees. There is the issue of baring arms. Our Constitution protects our right to bear arms for our protection from outside invaders and inside invaders which includes our present government. If the right to carry arms is taken away, our other freedoms will soon follow. There we other issues but these stuck with me. Everyone should read it. We forget what our founding fathers actually said.

Learning so much from this and finding and using The Unabrideged Federalist Papers by John Jay

Fast delivery and just as described.

When reading the Constitution, is a wonderful aid to understanding the meaning behind the writers' intention and how it has been applied through the years.

It is fitting to review this book in this week of historic Supreme Court decisions. While those that object to these rulings scream and rant about the decisions and state that the Supreme Court has overstepped its authority, trashed the Constitution, and are making laws that they are not allowed to do, they should remember the times when the decisions went their way and they congratulated the justices for interpreting the Constitution the way they wanted it done. The decisions made by the nine justices on the Supreme Court concerning the Constitution have always alienated Americans of various opinions. What is interesting is that here we are 228 years after it was written, and Americans disagree about its meaning just as much as they did two years after it was written. Americans have argued over its meaning before the ink was dry on the document. This book is a very nice annotated exploration of the Constitution by Linda Monk, a constitutional scholar who graduated from Harvard Law School and has received the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award, which is its highest honor for law related media. She has served on the Board of Trustees for the U.S. Capital Historical Society, been a lead curator at the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum and played a major role in the creation and development of the National Constitution Center. She is extremely well qualified to write a book like this concerning the Constitution. Monk’s book is wonderfully organized. The fact that it is annotated means that instead of reading the various articles and then something about them, the reader finds little comments, stories and anecdotes on each page. The history surrounding each piece of the document is also revealed which shows just how complex this instrument actually is. Supreme Court cases are scatted throughout the book which are quite helpful in revealing how the document has been interpreted over the years. What I like the most about this book is that Monk rejected a partisan view of the document. She interpreted it like the constitutional scholar she is. Where contention exists, she brings it up. Some of the issues are longstanding ones that have changed in their interpretations over the years. One of these issues is gay marriage. The ruling today makes Monk’s book prophetic in that she provided a discussion with Robert Bork, a Reagan nominee for the Court who did not make it through the nomination process. Bork’s comments reveal that he foresaw the actions of the court in today’s ruling when he stated that only a constitution amendment could prevent gay marriage. It is the comments and blurbs like this in Monk’s book that really show just how well she understands the Constitution. The result is a very open and honest read of the document complete with plenty of information to help a reader along. The book is suited for a wide audience, not just constitutional scholars or college students. It is easily readable by the general public. Readers should not expect a partisan diatribe or polemic text. Monk delivers the information as it is currently interpreted with information regarding modern issues on both sides of the arguments. She also goes through all of the amendments and this also reflects her impartiality. When we look at the section on the Tenth Amendment, Monk delivers an upfront and bipartisan interpretation of it. The section shows that this amendment has been seen in different ways over the years which reveals the fluidity of constitutional interpretation. It is in this vein that the book truly proves it value. With so many polemic books out there on the Constitution it is refreshing to have a good book that leaves the opinions to the reader, not the author. All in all, this is a very good and quite useful book. It is often assigned in government classes and I would have no problem using it in such a course in college. It is also a very good resource for all levels of education and even for scholars. I have found it quite useful to look at when considering parts of the Constitution. Some pieces are even useable as lesson plan material in my flipped classroom for survey courses. With that in mind, I give this book five stars. It has earned them.

This has been extremely helpful in my studies of the Constitution as well as the government. It provides details many other books leave out. I am SO glad I purchased this book. Thank you, Linda!!