A Country with No Name Tales from the Constitution |
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Author:
| De Grazia, Sebastian |
ISBN: | 978-0-679-74422-1 |
Publication Date: | Feb 1999 |
Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
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Imprint: | Vintage |
Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $19.00 |
Book Description:
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In an imaginative and masterful work of history, 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 student, will reveal to him the untold story of American Constitutional history. Her means: the Socratic method. Her message: that the Constitution was itself unconstitutional, and that its authors' inability to choose a...
More DescriptionIn an imaginative and masterful work of history, 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 student, will reveal to him the untold story of American Constitutional history. Her means: the Socratic method. Her message: that the Constitution was itself unconstitutional, and that its authors' inability to choose a name for the republic muddied the document's meaning for the future ahead.
Through these "tutorials" de Grazia passes in review our most revered heroes--Jefferson, Washington, Marshall, Lincoln, and Thoreau--revealing the complexity of their characters. St. John's unsettling tales arouse more in her disciple than intellectual curiosity. Their relationship unrolls in so humorous and seductive a way that only a musty academic could object. Satirical, intelligent, and sure-handed, A Country with No Name combines history and literature, politics and law to reinvigorate our best traditions.