I really can't. That's not to say that they don't exist, but I'm not familiar with any single book that I know I could say, "look here," and feel good about it. My own knowledge has accumulated across many different sources over many years. I am also a bit distrustful of more modern sources that want to project the nation's founding one way or another for contemporary purposes. Any such book must look at British/Colonial relations, the philosophical movements afoot in Europe and elsewhere which we call the Enlightenment, U.S. history in the 18th and 19th centuries (internal expansion and gradually working for greater international presence) and then good world histories for the 20th century. Tall order for one book :-).
For the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, it might just be easier (to start) by just reading them directly. I have a small (12.5cm x 9cm) book that contains both documents and is only 58 pages long at that size. Read them in that order as the Declaration lays out the moral statement for why a break from the British Empire was seen as necessary by the (then) British colonists and the Constitution was the legal reflection of those ideas... reading the Federalist Papers is great for getting in the mind of the Constitution's authors and supporters.
Sorry I couldn't be more helpful. Just a few weeks ago I watch a lecture that talked about Magna Carta and include discussion on its influence on the U.S. revolutionaries that founded the country. Just that one aspect was something that I didn't really see in many of the histories I've seen.
I appreciate your response! knowing that there's definitely no one single unbiased good book/source is actually a very useful thing to keep in mind - I'm currently reading "a peoples history of the united states" and pretty quickly realized that whilst it contains a lot of information, it's (necessarily?) written in a very particular tone.
As a recent transplant to the US I actually like the idea of having my own copy of the declaration and constitution, for both the actual information and kind of symbolic novelty of being here.
For the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, it might just be easier (to start) by just reading them directly. I have a small (12.5cm x 9cm) book that contains both documents and is only 58 pages long at that size. Read them in that order as the Declaration lays out the moral statement for why a break from the British Empire was seen as necessary by the (then) British colonists and the Constitution was the legal reflection of those ideas... reading the Federalist Papers is great for getting in the mind of the Constitution's authors and supporters.
Sorry I couldn't be more helpful. Just a few weeks ago I watch a lecture that talked about Magna Carta and include discussion on its influence on the U.S. revolutionaries that founded the country. Just that one aspect was something that I didn't really see in many of the histories I've seen.