A stunning revision of our founding document’s evolving history that forces us to confront anew the question that animated the founders so long ago:

What is our Constitution?

Praise for The Second Creation

  • “Gienapp’s study—intellectual history as textual exegesis at its best—offers a convincing and invaluable examination of the words and ideas that marked the evolution of the American constitutional imagination."

    — Karen J. Greenberg, The Nation

  • "The Second Creation is a brilliant and timely intervention in American constitutional history."

    — Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia

  • "No one in the future can be considered a literate commentator on the history of the Constitution and American constitutional development who has not carefully read and reflected on Jonathan Gienapp’s stunning book The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era.”

    — Sanford Levinson, Balkinization

  • "Sophisticated…throws a wrench in the logic of judicial originalism by demonstrating the flexibility of the Constitution’s meaning during its first years."

    — Nick Burns, The Spectator

  • “[A] relentlessly intelligent and substantive book...[The Second Creation is], if not outright the best first book on the American founding since Gordon Wood’s legendary 700-plus-page dissertation was rewritten into The Creation of the American Republic, among only a select few that could compete for that honor.”

    — Alan Gibson, American Political Thought

  • "[Gienapp's] fascinating and provocative story is told with great mastery and drama."

    — Mary Sarah Bilder, Boston College Law School

  • “[A]n intriguing, highly readable, engaging, and extraordinarily thought-provoking work.”

    — Sandra B. Placzek, Law Library Journal

  • "Gienapp’s elegant reconstruction of the contested terrain of early American constitutional interpretation has wide-ranging implications for how we understand the earliest debates over the Constitution’s meaning."

    — Saul Cornell, Fordham University

  • "I am tempted to suggest that this may be the most important book about the Constitution since Max M. Edling’s A Revolution in Favor of Government, if not Gordon S. Wood’s Creation of the American Republic.”

    — Brian Steele, William and Mary Quarterly

  • "Jonathan Gienapp's new book, The Second Creation, is a marvelous study of the earliest debates over constitutional language, meaning, and interpretation. In virtually every respect, the book is brilliantly conceived, meticulously researched, and masterfully executed.”

    — John Mikhail, Constitutional Commentary

  • "This important book…deserves the attention of anyone seeking to understand how the twists and turn of contingency propelled and gave lasting form to the founding of the Republic.”

    — David Konig, Journal of American History

  • "This marvelous book will provoke conversations on a host of issues that animate political and constitutional history. Gienapp has written a study that will shape our understanding of the Constitution for years to come.”

    — Christopher Childers, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography

  • “[F]or students and scholars of the period, The Second Creation’s absorbing tale of constitutional possibility serves as a powerful reminder of the dynamism and uncertainty that characterized the Founding Era, and encourages us to re-examine received truths about the very nature of our foundational charter.”

    — Kevin Arlyck, Law & History Review

  • "Gienapp…provides a decisive and necessary intervention in discourse over the place and nature of the Constitution in US history and politics....Deeply researched and convincingly argued, Gienapp's work should be read by all who are interested in the early American Republic and US constitutionalism.”

    — Kevin Gannon, Choice

  • "For this reason, as well as the stunning rich and sophisticated treatment of constitutional argument, The Second Creation belongs which such works as Rakove, Original Meanings in the constitutional canon.”

    — Mark Graber, Balkinization

  • "The Second Creation by Jonathan Gienapp is a remarkable book. Gienapp has done impressive original research, and he writes about complex matters with admirable clarity.”

    — Aviam Soifer, Eighteenth-Century Studies

  • "Among the many achievements of Jonathan Gienapp’s Second Creation is the book’s elegant and decisive dismantling of many tidy just-so stories that constitutional law scholars tend to tell themselves about the period between 1787 and 1796.”

    — Alison L. LaCroix, Balkinization

  • “[Gienapp’s] account of the development of constitutionalism during this period is convincing and enlightening.”

    — Michael J. Faber, Perspectives on Politics

Prizes and Accolades

  • 2019 Best Book in American Political Thought Award

    American Political Science Association

  • 2017 Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize

    Harvard University Press

  • Outstanding Academic Title for 2019

    Choice

  • Book of the Year for 2018

    Spectator USA

  • Finalist: 2019 Frederick Jackson Turner Award

    Organization of American Historians

2019 Publius Symposium

A Conversation about Jonathan Gienapp’s
The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era

Co-hosted by the Stanford Constitutional Law Center and the Stanford Center for Law and History

Podcasts

New Books Network

Riches & Power

The Age of Jackson Podcast

Laws Dimensions: Musings on Law, Politics, and Culture