After 40 long days and nights of being tossed on the rough seas, on Dec. 27, 1760, the merchant vessel Racehorse finally landed in Boston. Along with its trans-Atlantic cargo came news from Britain: George II was dead. His 22-year-old grandson would be crowned George III. The transition did not bode well for the American colonies.
This anecdote and its layered consequences launch Akhil Reed Amar’s fascinating book “The Words That Made Us.” A masterly synthesis of history and law, Mr. Amar’s tome delivers, as the author describes it, a wide-angled, multigenerational narrative of “the American constitutional project.”
