These Truths

This book makes American history relevant, alive, and urgent.

This is not a book to read in one sitting–but to enjoy in segments. I felt so much smarter and prepared to understand our current challenges to truth and trust after reading this book.

At this critical juncture in our democracy, this book will illuminate, enlighten, and inform! 

I seize any issue of the New Yorker that includes an article by the brilliant Harvard historian Jill Lepore, so I was eager to read Lepore’s unconventional history of her country.

Too many national histories leap from one "great man" to the next, focusing on political, economic, and military achievements (and, more rarely, losses.) Lepore’s narrative foregrounds diverse points of view, and points out the contradictions and ironies in American history, particularly the dependence of some Founding Fathers on slave labour, even as they proclaimed their egalitarian idealism.

Jill Lepore is a distinguished historian and staff writer for the New Yorker. In this volume, she focuses on the ideals of political equality and civil rights that shaped America. Deeply attuned to the struggles that have shaped the United States, the book offers a sweeping lyrical introduction to American history.