SCAS News - 9 April, 2021

When Constitutions Took Over the World – Linda Colley’s New Book in Focus

“If there were a Nobel Prize in History, Colley would be my nominee”, writer and historian Jill
Lepore reveals in an article recently published in The New Yorker. In the article, Jill Lepore explores
the topic of constitutions, and with this also the brand new book The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen:
Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World (Liveright, 2021), written by SCAS
Long-term Fellow Linda Colley. Devoting a 6-page spread to the topic and the book (on which
Colley worked while in residence at the Swedish Collegium in the academic year 2017-18), Lepore
shares many fascinating glimpses of the book and pays tribute to the work and thinking of Colley
beautifully. The full article may be found here: "When Constitutions Took Over the World" (Publish-
ed in the print edition of the 29 March, 2021 issue of The New Yorker, with the headline “The Age
of Consent.”)

Linda Colley is Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University and a Non-
resident Long-term Fellow for Programmes in Early Modern and Modern History at SCAS.
Read more about Linda Colley >>