I tried to keep that spirit in a storytelling fashion. It could have gone differently at every single point.
The whole thing has a sense of continuance and a by-the-skin-of-our-teeth recklessness to it all. I myself at times wasn’t sure how things were going to turn out. So I was working at a very frenetic pace and going chronologically. Are they really gonna take down this president?” That’s good storytelling. I listen to Slow Burn, the podcast, and I would catch myself because I kept thinking, “My God. By the end of the book, I was thinking that it’s a wonder we’ve made it this far.
The political divisions you delineate run deeply through our history. “It’s a lot of work to research because we don’t have as much of a record,” Lepore says, “but it’s also the super fun part.” By acknowledging the common person, These Truths is a history book that’s not just about decisive battles and lofty notions but one that gives voice to the powerful social movements that have churned our collective past. Lepore, who has previously written a biography of Benjamin Franklin’s kid sister and about the secret life of Wonder Woman’s creator, brings as much life and import to these people as she does to John Locke. For example, there’s the hunchback abolitionist who changed Ben Franklin’s views on slavery, or the strikingly tall 19th century suffragette populist leader who railed against Wall Street and probably would have loved a MAGA hat, or the African American war widow suing for her deceased husband’s pension from the war of 1812. It’s an obligation for all of us to figure out where we came from and get our bearings and figure out a good direction to go in, and that requires being honest.”ĭespite all the weighty ideas in the book, it is also delightfully populated by forgotten characters from our past. “A big argument of the book is that history is an inquiry. But disputes and differing interpretations about these founding truths are present at the creation: religiosity vs. Lepore, and Thomas Jefferson, argue that three central principals bind the American experiment: political equality, natural rights and popular sovereignty. The 800-page opus, starting in the 1500s and moving along briskly to Donald Trump, also serves as a liberal cri de coeur – an answer to conservative claims on the stewardship of our history, our founding principles and especially the Constitution. Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore’s latest book, These Truths: a History of the United States, is an epic, sweeping and often disquieting look at the nation’s past.
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