A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen examines the cultural impact of the Constitution on the United States, explores the Constitution’s place in the public consciousness and its role as a symbol in American life from ratification in 1788 to our own time, and expounds on what the Constitution has meant to the American people (perceptions and misperceptions, uses and abuses, knowledge and ignorance), Kammen shows that although there are recurrent declarations of reverence for our American "Ark of the Covenant," most of us neither know nor fully understand our Constitution.

Michael Kammen is the Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture at Cornell University