Customer Reviews

Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States of America, Bill of Rights and Constitutional Amendments

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As this is a review for a Kindle book, I think the most important review is how easy it is to navigate.

The book actually contains the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution with amendments. The 'Independance' typo noted in a separate review appears to have been corrected and I did not find any occurrence of the misspelling when I searched for it.

From the Kindle menu, the 'Table of Contents' is not available. You can only go to the cover, beginning or a specific location.

When the book first opens, it goes to the first page of the Declaration of Independence. In my view, it should start on the cover or the contents page. There is a Table of Contents page and if you turn back one page from the Declaration, you come to the contents page.

On 'goto' the 'cover', it takes you to the Cover page. The Cover page is simply text listing the contents and the actual links for the Table of Contents are on the next page, which is fine. It seems to me that it would be more efficient to combine the Cover page and Table of Contents into a single page, but this is not the case.

On 'goto' the 'beginning', it takes you to the first page of the Declaration of Independence. This would probably be fine if the 'table of contents' link in the 'goto' section worked, but it doesn't, so there is no obvious way to get to the Table of Contents.

There are no further sub-links for the Declaration of Independence, which is workable as it is relatively short and has no subsections. Fortunately, both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution each have links from the first page to each of the main sections in the respective document. Inside the document, there are no links forward or backward, so you simply use the page and 'back' keys to navigate each document.

There is no index or other facility to aid in searching content, other than the Kindle search function. The search facility appears to work for the few simple searches I tried, but I suspect that has more to do with the Kindle than the book.

It could be better, but for $0.99, it's not too bad.

On the document itself, my view is that an understanding, by every citizen, of the US Constitution and just how far the Federal government has strayed from it are pivotal to preserving the few freedoms we have left and regaining those we've already lost.

Recently, I purchased this wonderful offering at the listed bargain-basement price from Amazon.com - and thank goodness Amazon understands the singular necessity for providing these documents that form what all Americans have believed is our We-The-People Consitutional Democracy. My concern, however, is just how many Americans today have read this - and if not, why? It is astonishing to read even one sentence of the US Constitution for example and, given our dire national events in play, realize for perhaps a frightening instant that an issue for any state or federal appellate court might be: Does the US Consitution apply in any respect, anymore, to the way our three branches of government (the judiciary, the legislative and executive branches) work today? Or put another way, has the US Consitution become, in effect, null and void?! I cannot answer this question for anyone else - but if you care about America - please buy and read this small book...and then tell a friend who will tell another. Perhaps, one day enough Americans will have read it as a start to making it a reality as a matter of our everyday lives once again....

As for the content, what can anyone say about the Founding Fathers than what the Constitution they wrote and enacted ensured for us!

The book itself is the desk-top version of a pocket edition except built for page turning and margin notes. I penciled in the content at the top of each page to quicken my research.

Buy it.

Woody

I have recently left the Republican party and joined the Constitutional Party in hopes that a better tomorrow can be found for our government. I needed to remember "whereof I speak" so purchased this very good, concise issue that fits well into my briefcase. As a middle school teacher, I want to be ready with the truth, and not the tripe printed in the textbooks.

Not a bad book with founding documents. I could not find any of the amendments to the constitution either within the text of the constitution, or separately. This would be good for a general reference, but without the complete constitution the value is diminutive. I would rate everything else at least 4 stars.

I did not see this complaint in any of the other reviews. If I had known that my copy would have omitted the amendments, I would not have purchased this book.

A document every American should have and understand. Also, should be required reading in our school systems.

Very happy with the overall presentation. No anti-american discalimer. The only thing I wish they had done, is put a heading over the pages to show when you were looking at the constitution, declaration, resolutions, etc. This would allow you to find these other works faster.

We need to know the details of our Constitution and what made America great. Especially when our freedoms are in jeopardy.

The booklet contains just what the description says it contains and is a handy guide to the information it holds. I no longer have to wonder what a particular article or ammendment means.

Very important documents to have. More people should be aware of exactly what's in here and, in addition to that, should read up on the political/economic climate in the day these were written. Our founding fathers were geniuses but they could only respond to the world around them. They did not envision political parties, large campaigning organization and corporations. Wage labor only involved six percent of the population at the time (family trades like carpentry and blacksmiths and such predominated). As such, careful readers should notice a distinct lack of reference to these institutions.

It clearly seems to me that the main intent of the founding fathers was to create a democratic society based on free speech and inspire successive generations focus on this ideal instead of getting bogged down on word meanings and ignoring things not covered by these documents. The big picture is more important than all this minutiae and a reading of history will prove that this is what was intended.

In my mind, its pretty disgusting how far we've strayed from the original ideal. Our country isn't even democratic anymore. These political campaigns are so expensive that having enough campaign contributions for media coverage trumps having good ideas that voters agree with. So politicians listen to their campaign funders much more than the voters and we don't have a voice. This extends to wage labor and large businesses too. The contribution of labor to a company is just as important as the contribution of capital to a company so saying that laborers don't deserve at least a 50% say in the decisions of the company is absolutely ridiculous. Seriously, how is our country democratic if the economic institutions so central to our well being completely suppress our free speech and give us no voice in the decision-making?

We need to get back to the ideals of our founding fathers and stop nitpicking the passages like our politicians.