Born Equal

Remaking America's Constitution, 1840-1920

De: Akhil Reed Amar

Narrado por: Keval Shah, John Mulaney

From America’s foremost constitutional scholar, the definitive history of how the ideal of birth equality reshaped the American Constitution, from antebellum debates over slavery and secession, to the Civil War and emancipation, to women’s suffrage

In 1840, millions of Black Americans groaned in the chains of slavery. By 1920, millions of American men and women of every race had won the vote.

In Born Equal, the prizewinning constitutional historian Akhil Reed Amar recounts the dramatic constitutional debates that unfolded across these eight decades, when four glorious amendments abolished slavery, secured Black and female citizenship, and extended suffrage regardless of race or gender. At the heart of this era was the epic and ever-evolving idea that all Americans are created equal. The promise of birth equality sat at the base of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. But in the nineteenth century, remarkable American women and men—especially Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Abraham Lincoln—elaborated a new vision of what this ideal demanded. Their debates played out from Seneca Falls to the halls of Congress, from Bloody Kansas to Gettysburg, from Ford’s Theater to the White House gates, ultimately transforming the nation and the world.

An ambitious narrative history and a penetrating work of legal and political analysis, Born Equal is a vital new portrait of America’s winding road toward equality.

©2025 Akhil Reed Amar (P)2025 Basic Books

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Akhil Reed Amar is one of our most prodigious constitutional scholars, one of our finest teachers, and, as if that were not enough, a writer of stunning grace and power. Born Equal is a masterpiece—and one that could not be better timed, as we struggle yet again to define and deliver the American promise of equality. Essential reading.”—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of King: A Life

“A deep dive into the words that shaped and sharpened the American nation's fundamental founding principle of equality and equity under law, Born Equal is required reading for anyone seeking to understand, interpret, and apply the United States constitution today.”—Edward J. Larson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History and author of Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters

“With deep conviction and engaging narrative flair, Amar weaves a fascinating constitutional history of a nation challenged to fulfill the promise that all were born equal. Amar asks the reader to think with him—perhaps even to argue—about the crucial nineteenth century constitutional struggles over the meaning of America.”—Mary Sarah Bilder, Bancroft Prize-winning author of Madison's Hand