September 17, 1987, was the bicentennial anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. Near that anniversary, how well do Americans know their principal governing document? This edition of Soundings presents replies to that question by scholars Michael Kammen first and by Joyce Appleby at [14:00].
At the time of this interview, Kammen was professor of history at Cornell University. His book on the Constitution, A Machine That Would Go of Itself, was awarded the Francis Parkman Prize at the 1987 meeting of the Society of American Historians.
Appleby was professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her books include Capitalism and a New Social Order and Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
