A Nation With No Identify: Tales from the Structure

In an imaginative and masterful work of historical past, Pulitzer Prize-winner Sebastian de Grazia has created two memorable characters. Nineteen-year-old Oliver Huggins is in for the tutorial of his life. For twelve afternoons, Claire St. John, a beguiling British graduate scholar, will divulge to him the untold story of American Constitutional historical past. Her means: the Socratic technique. Her message: that the Structure was itself unconstitutional, and that its authors’ lack of ability to decide on a reputation for the republic muddied the doc’s that means for the longer term forward.

By means of these “tutorials” de Grazia passes in assessment our most revered heroes—Jefferson, Washington, Marshall, Lincoln, and Thoreau—revealing the complexity of their characters. St. John’s unsettling tales arouse extra in her disciple than mental curiosity. Their relationship unrolls in so humorous and seductive a approach that solely a musty tutorial may object. Satirical, clever, and sure-handed, A Nation with No Identify combines historical past and literature, politics and legislation to reinvigorate our greatest traditions.