Written in elegiac prose, Lepore's groundbreaking investigation places truth itself-a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence-at the center of the nation's history. The American experiment rests on three ideas-"these truths," Jefferson called them-political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too, on a fearless dedication to inquiry, Lepore argues, because self-government depends on it. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise?
These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation's truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore traces the intertwined histories of American politics, law, journalism, and technology, from the colonial town meeting to the nineteenth-century party machine, from talk radio to twenty-first-century Internet polls, from Magna Carta to the Patriot Act, from the printing press to Facebook News.
Along the way, Lepore's sovereign chronicle is filled with arresting sketches of both well-known and lesser-known Americans, from a parade of presidents and a rogues' gallery of political mischief makers to the intrepid leaders of protest movements, including Frederick Douglass, the famed abolitionist orator; William Jennings Bryan, the three-time presidential candidate and ultimately tragic populist; Pauli Murray, the visionary civil rights strategist; and Phyllis Schlafly, the uncredited architect of modern conservatism.
Americans are descended from slaves and slave owners, from conquerors and the conquered, from immigrants and from people who have fought to end immigration. "A nation born in contradiction will fight forever over the meaning of its history," Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. "The past is an inheritance, a gift and a burden," These Truths observes. "It can't be shirked. There's nothing for it but to get to know it."
Show moreWritten in elegiac prose, Lepore's groundbreaking investigation places truth itself-a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence-at the center of the nation's history. The American experiment rests on three ideas-"these truths," Jefferson called them-political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too, on a fearless dedication to inquiry, Lepore argues, because self-government depends on it. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise?
These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation's truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore traces the intertwined histories of American politics, law, journalism, and technology, from the colonial town meeting to the nineteenth-century party machine, from talk radio to twenty-first-century Internet polls, from Magna Carta to the Patriot Act, from the printing press to Facebook News.
Along the way, Lepore's sovereign chronicle is filled with arresting sketches of both well-known and lesser-known Americans, from a parade of presidents and a rogues' gallery of political mischief makers to the intrepid leaders of protest movements, including Frederick Douglass, the famed abolitionist orator; William Jennings Bryan, the three-time presidential candidate and ultimately tragic populist; Pauli Murray, the visionary civil rights strategist; and Phyllis Schlafly, the uncredited architect of modern conservatism.
Americans are descended from slaves and slave owners, from conquerors and the conquered, from immigrants and from people who have fought to end immigration. "A nation born in contradiction will fight forever over the meaning of its history," Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. "The past is an inheritance, a gift and a burden," These Truths observes. "It can't be shirked. There's nothing for it but to get to know it."
Show moreJill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and professor of law at Harvard Law School. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her many books include the international bestseller These Truths: A History of the United States. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"The history of the American South is one of change, power
struggle, political bending from Left to Right, negotiating race,
and all of this cannot be contained in one volume or by one
narrative that at times feels too neat — even if Lepore is a truly
gifted writer with profound insight into those she writes about. Do
read her magnificent book, but just remember that it's not the
whole story."
*The Spectator*
"These Truths is a crucial work for presenting a fresh and
clear-sighted narrative of the entire story, Columbus soup to Trump
nuts, of what is at present a most terribly troubled nation...
There have been more than a few moments in the last two centuries,
moments racked by crisis and scandal, incompetence and insurgency,
which have competed to test that capability. All of them, from the
Trail of Tears to the Twin Towers, from White Power to Watergate,
appear, exciting and page-turningly fascinating, in one of those
rare history books that can be read with pleasure for its sheer
narrative energy."
*Simon Winchester - New Statesman*
"Lepore knows that the ‘story of America’ is as plural and mutable
as the nation itself, and the result is a work of prismatic
richness, one that rewards not just reading but rereading. This
will be an instant classic."
*Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of The Lies that Bind*
"... clear-eyed history of the country. The feat of compression is
rarely attempted, still less in one volume, and Ms Lepore brings a
refreshingly modern eye to a daunting task."
*The Economist*
"By emphasising founding fathers and presidents, and charismatic
leaders on both sides of the political divide, [Jill Lepore] makes
history vivid."
*Ten books to read in September - BBC Culture*
"[Lepore’s] one-volume history is elegant, readable, sobering; it
extends a steadying hand when a breakneck news cycle lurches from
one event to another, confounding minds and churning stomachs."
*Jennifer Szalai - The New York Times*
"Jill Lepore's sweeping nonfiction narrative of America doesn't
just chronicle our history; it rewrites it, illuminating the direct
line between the country's past and polarized present."
*Newsweek International*
"This sweeping, sobering account of the American past is a story
not of relentless progress but of conflict and contradiction, with
crosscurrents of reason and faith, black and white, immigrant and
native, industry and agriculture rippling through a narrative that
is far from completion."
*Editor's Choice - The New York Times Book Review*
"'An old-fashioned civics book,’ Harvard historian and New Yorker
contributor Jill Lepore calls it, a glint in her eye. This fat,
ludicrously ambitious one-volume history is a lot more than that.
In its spirit of inquiry, in its eager iconoclasms, These Truths
enacts the founding ideals of the country it describes."
*The Huffington Post*
"This vivid history brings alive the contradictions and hypocrisies
of the land of the free... excellent book."
*David Aaronovitch - The Times*
"I love Lepore’s writing in The New Yorker, and the book is pitched
as a major standard history of the US. That made it
irresistible."
*Winter reads 2018-19: the best books of the season - Times Higher
Education*
"... extraordinary book."
*On my Radar: Anand Giridharadas - The Guardian*
"This is a history for the 21st century, far more inclusive than
the standard histories of the past."
*The Guardian*
"This is a tale told with the verve of a great teacher, the
modulated literary style of a high-class novelist and the generous,
careful eye of a historian who treats her sources as precious
artefacts not as subjects for plunder. Who else but Lepore, whose
essays for the New Yorker are breathtakingly well-observed, would
introduce Tom Paine as 'the spitfire son of an English grocer' or
Huey Long as 'wild-eyed and fist-stamping'?"
*History Today*
"I'm ending the year back in the real world though, reading the
most fabulously written history of the USA called These Truths by
Jill Lepore. She’s devastating on the role played by Britain’s
enthusiasm for slavery in the founding of the land of
‘liberty’."
*Armando Iannucci, 2018’s best books - The Big Issue*
"Lepore guides us through the infernos of the Revolution, the civil
rights movement and 9/11 with the judgement and wisdom of Dante's
Virgil... A declaration of how bold and daring and difficult the
American experiment continues to be, These Truths is a colossus of
a book which looks down on Trump's America with the authority of
Mount Rushmore."
*The Oldie*
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