Historian Joseph Tartakovsky provides a framework for understanding our nation's Constitution by presenting us with ten individuals who have impacted this vital document, whether writing, amending, challenging, or applying its contents to new situations. From the words of Alexander Hamilton at the end of the American Revolution, to former slave Ida B. Wells-Barnett's thoughts after emancipation, to Justice Antonin Scalia's role in shaping the recent conversation about rights and government overreach, The Lives of the Constitution proposes we can only understand our present when we remember our past.