MARC Record from Library of Congress

LEADER: 03907cam a2200337 i 4500
001 2012049750
003 DLC
005 20140401111036.0
008 121212s2013 enk 000 0 eng
010 $a 2012049750
020 $a9780199974740 (hardback : alk. paper)
040 $aDLC$beng$cDLC$erda$dDLC
042 $apcc
043 $an-us---
050 00 $aKF4550$b.E663 2013
082 00 $a342.7302$223
084 $aLAW018000$2bisacsh
100 1 $aEpps, Garrett,$eauthor.
245 10 $aAmerican epic :$breading the US Constitution /$cGarrett Epps.
264 1 $aOxford :$bOxford University Press,$c[2013]
300 $axxv, 274 p. ;$c25 cm
336 $atext$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$2rdacarrier
520 $a"In 1987, E.L. Doctorow celebrated the Constitution's bicentennial by reading it. "It is five thousand words long but reads like fifty thousand," he said. Distinguished legal scholar Garrett Epps--himself an award-winning novelist--disagrees. It's about 7,500 words. And Doctorow "missed a good deal of high rhetoric, many literary tropes, and even a trace of, if not wit, at least irony," he writes. Americans may venerate the Constitution, "but all too seldom is it read." In American Epic, Epps takes us through a complete reading of the Constitution--even the "boring" parts--to achieve an appreciation of its power and a holistic understanding of what it says. In this book he seeks not to provide a definitive interpretation, but to listen to the language and ponder its meaning. He draws on four modes of reading: scriptural, legal, lyric, and epic. The Constitution's first three words, for example, sound spiritual--but Epps finds them to be more aspirational than prayer-like. "Prayers are addressed to someone. either an earthly king or a divine lord, and great care is taken to name the addressee. This does the reverse. The speaker is 'the people,' the words addressed to the world at large." He turns the Second Amendment into a poem to illuminate its ambiguity. He notices oddities and omissions. The Constitution lays out rules for presidential appointment of officers, for example, but not removal. Should the Senate approve each firing? Can it withdraw its "advice and consent" and force a resignation? And he challenges himself, as seen in his surprising discussion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in light of Article 4, which orders states to give "full faith and credit" to the acts of other states. Wry, original, and surprising, American Epic is a scholarly and literary tour de force"--$cProvided by publisher.
520 $a"The United States is the only nation in the world in which political leaders, judges and soldiers all swear allegiance not to a king or a people but to a document, the Constitution. The Constitution today, however, is much revered but little read. . Readers of AMERICAN EPIC will never think of the Constitution in quite the same way again. Garrett Epps, a legal scholar who is also a journalist and writer of prize-winning fiction, takes readers on a literary tour of the Constitution, finding in it much that is interesting, puzzling, praiseworthy, and sometimes hilarious. Reading the Constitution like a literary work yields a host of meanings that shed new light on what it means to be an American"--$cProvided by publisher.
505 8 $aMachine generated contents note: -- Preface -- Preamble: "Tell me, Muse, how it all began" -- Article I: A Tale of Two Cities -- Article II: Under the Bramble Bush -- Article III: Solomon's Sword -- Article IV: All God's Children -- Article V: Alter or Abolish -- Article VI: The Supreme Law of the Land -- Article VII: Bloodless and Successful -- Last Things.
650 0 $aConstitutional law$zUnited States.
650 0 $aConstitutions$zUnited States.
610 10 $aUnited States.$tConstitution.
650 7 $aLAW / Constitutional.$2bisacsh