Constitutional Amendments: An Encyclopedia of the People, Procedures, Politics, Primary Documents, and Campaigns for the 27 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States

Gr 9 Up—This encyclopedia's coverage of amendments focuses on passage and ratification and includes objective introductions, transcripts of relevant congressional debate, primary-source excerpts from articles and court rulings, biographical sketches of people most involved in their crafting and passage, and "America at That Time" sections that look at culture and life when each amendment was passed. Although the premise is good, the material suffers from numerous flaws. The 10 amendments of the Bill of Rights are grouped in a single chapter, which limits treatment of the laws, court cases, and societal norms that have defined them. A much more significant problem is that most of the background and analysis relies upon and cites dated scholarship and sources. This deprives users of current research and fails to adequately address important developments, such as the Supreme Court's incorporation of Bill of Rights protections into state actions through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, which have occurred in the last 50 years. Many of these dated sources are written in an old-fashioned style that will have little appeal to students, and some discussions of legal issues are so complex that even the most advanced high school students will struggle to understand them. Photos and illustrations are poorly reproduced and many lack captions. Most student research about constitutional amendments is centered on the changes they brought rather than on their creation and ratification, and this set pays scant attention to those changes.—Mary Mueller, formerly at Rolla Junior High School, MO