The Bill of Rights Primer: A Citizen's Guidebook to the American Bill of Rights by Les Adams, Akhil Amar

BOOK REVIEW
The Bill of Rights Primer: A Citizen's Guidebook to the American Bill of Rights by Les Adams, Akhil Amar

FIVE STARS - A historical document clearly explained with it’s impact clarified. 

This fascinating book will take you back to the ore-industrialization years and the nearly impossible War of Independence, the Civil War, women's rights, prohibition, and the political powers that continually attack to bend it.
Excerpts:
One of the ironies of history that this thoroughly reprehensible monster played an instrumental role in the foundation of English constitutional government from which a number of the American concepts of freedom embodied in our Bill of Rights were to be drawn. You see, King John happened to be the most notable participant in an event that many historians regard as being one of the most important in the entire history of the western world.
The signing of Magna Carta by King John
(the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and its accompanying Bill of Rights) as one of the most important writings in the history of the American republic.
This is a book written not for lawyers and judges but for ordinary citizens who care about their Constitution and their rights.



As great as men like Madison and Jefferson were, they lived and died as slaveholders, and their Bill of Rights was tainted by its quiet complicity with the original sin of slavery.



Thomas Paine, (1737-1809). Anglo-American political philosopher who enjoyed active and influential political careers in England, France, and the United States. After the publication of his Rights of Man (1791-2), a powerful condemnation of Edward Burke’s Reflections Upon the French Revolution, Paine was indicted by the British government for treason. In the United States, he was an associate of major figures in the American Revolution, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. His best known writings were: The American Crisis (1776-83), a series of pamphlets; and Common Sense (1776), in which Paine argued that common sense surely led to the conclusion that the American Colonies should become independent of Great Britain. This little pamphlet, which sold over 500,000 copies (an extraordinary figure for that time), was one of the most influential political documents in American history.