The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution, by Linda R. Monk

(0786867205)

The odd-feeling, clunky title does not bode well for this. I will say that this is very well-researched and fairly well-condensed so as not to be horrifically long. It's actually easy to get through, written at what I expect is about a 7th-grade reading level. The ideas are more complicated than what most 13-year-olds are willing to work on, though.

Generally a good overview of the U.S. Constitution, its history, and why the changes were made when they were made. One of the highlights is the inclusion of quotes from speeches and legal cases of people involved in the argument of each amendment.

My only question is why she could not have included the dates of each amendment near the words for each one. And the quotes were completely undated: if you didn't know King's speech was in 1963, you sure wouldn't have found out without scrabbling through the bibliography and or endnotes (which were not numbered--you just have to guess on what was cited and what wasn't).

Anyway, it shouldn't have taken me 2 weeks to read this. It wasn't that bad. I'm just that busy!