| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Constitution in Congress: Democrats and Whigs, 1829–1861. By David P. Currie. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. xxii, 346 pp. $39.00, ISBN 0-226-12900-4.)

I imagine that most readers of this journal can count on no hands the number of reference books that they have read cover to cover with any sustained enjoyment, at least if they have not yet encountered the works of David P. Currie. Having examined the U.S. Supreme Court's body of constitutional work in previous books, Currie has more recently turned to collecting and analyzing the constitutional controversies that have roiled Congress and the presidency. The comprehensiveness of the instant volume (the first of two covering the antebellum years) and the absence of any but the broadest sort of argument make this book chiefly a reference tool. But the simultaneous vigor and good humor of Currie's prose make nearly every page an entertainment, at least for specialists who can follow Currie's lawyerly analyses as easily as he writes them.

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