We the People A History of the U.S. Constitution 1st Edition by Jill Lepore (2025)

We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore is the Winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for History — a landmark work of American historical scholarship that traces the full, remarkable, and often contentious history of the United States Constitution from its origins to the present day. Named one of President Barack Obama's favorite books of 2025, a New York Times Bestseller, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, this is the definitive constitutional history for our time.

Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Smithsonian, Bookpage, and the Chicago Public Library, and longlisted for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, We the People is Jill Lepore's most ambitious and essential work — a sweeping, capacious history that arrives at precisely the right moment in American public life.

Written with the narrative power and scholarly rigor that have made Jill Lepore one of America's foremost public historians, this book may be her finest yet — a work that illuminates the living history of a document that continues to shape, constrain, and inspire American democracy. Lepore brings the Constitution to life through the voices of the people who wrote it, interpreted it, fought over it, and transformed it across nearly two and a half centuries of American history.

Essential reading for students of American history, constitutional law, political science, and civics — and for every American who wants to understand where their most fundamental governing document came from and where it might lead. A magnificent work of history and a landmark contribution to American letters.