Review excerpt:

"From Parchment to Power" is one of those increasingly rare books about American constitutional matters: It strives only to teach, not to grind axes; there are no tedious and tendentious academic squabbles being aired here. Rather, this is constitutional history as it used to be written--clearly, compellingly and convincingly. This is all the more amazing given that its subject is the Bill of Rights, those first 10 amendments to the Constitution that have in this century all but eclipsed the Constitution itself as the essence of constitutional law.

Gary L. McDowell is director of the Institute of United States Studies at the University of London. Robert A. Goldwin is a resident scholar of constitutional studies at AEI.