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Jill Lepore

David woods kemper '41 professor of american history, harvard college professor, and professor of law, harvard law school.

Harvard University | Cambridge, MA 02138 | Assistant Nicholas Trefonides

These Truths: A History of the United States. Inquiry Edition

Norton college editions

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Few, if any, historians have brought such insight, wisdom, and empathy to public discourse as Jill Lepore. Arriving at The New Yorker in 2005, Lepore, with her panoptical range and razor-sharp style, brought a transporting freshness and a literary vivacity to everything from profiles of long-dead writers to urgent constitutional analysis to an unsparing scrutiny of the woeful affairs of the nation itself. The astonishing essays collected in The Deadline offer a prismatic portrait of Americans’ techno-utopianism, frantic fractiousness, and unprecedented—but armed—aimlessness. From lockdowns and race commissions to Bratz dolls and bicycles, to the losses that haunt Lepore’s life, these essays again and again cross what she calls the deadline , the “river of time that divides the quick from the dead.” Echoing Gore Vidal’s United States in its massive intellectual erudition, The Deadline , with its remarkable juxtaposition of the political and the personal, challenges the very nature of the essay—and of history—itself.

Lepore, Jill . 2020. “ In Every Dark Hour: The Last Time Democracy Nearly Died .” The New Yorker, February 3, 2020 . Article

In the most ambitious, one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation.

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, writes Jill Lepore in a groundbreaking investigation into the American past that places truth itself at the center of the nation’s history. In riveting prose, These Truths tells the story of America, beginning in 1492, to ask whether the course of events has proven the nation’s founding truths, or belied them. “A nation born in contradiction, liberty in a land of slavery, will fight forever over the meaning of its history,” Lepore writes, finding meaning in those very contradictions as she weaves American history into a majestic tapestry of faith and hope, of peril and prosperity, of technological progress and moral anguish. Part spellbinding chronicle, part old-fashioned civics book, These Truths, filled with arresting sketches of Americans from John Winthrop and Frederick Douglass to Pauli Murray and Phyllis Schlafly, offers an authoritative new history of a great, and greatly troubled, nation.

Praise for These Truths

“[B]rilliant…insightful…It isn’t until you start reading it that you realize how much we need a book like this one at this particular moment.”

—Andrew Sullivan,  The New York Times Book Review

“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.”

— The   New York Times Book Review , Editors’ Choice

“[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 is an extraordinarily gifted writer, and  These Truths  is nothing short of a masterpiece of American history. By engaging with our country's painful past (and present) in an intellectually honest way, she has created a book that truly does encapsulate the American story in all its pain and all its triumph.”

–Michael Schaub,  NPR  

“A splendid rendering—filled with triumph, tragedy, and hope—that will please Lepore’s readers immensely and win her many new ones.”

— Kirkus Reviews , starred review

“This thought-provoking and fascinating book stands to become the definitive one-volume U.S. history for a new generation.”

— Library Journal , starred review

“An ambitious and provocative attempt to interpret American history as an effort to fulfill and maintain certain fundamental principles. . . . Lepore is a historian with wide popular appeal, and this comprehensive work will answer readers’ questions about who we are as a nation.”

— Booklist , starred review

“Astounding… [Lepore] has assembled evidence of an America that was better than some thought, worse than almost anyone imagined, and weirder than most serious history books ever convey. Armed with the facts of what happened before, we are better able to approach our collective task of figuring out what should happen now . . . Perhaps instead of the next U2 album, Apple could make a copy of  These Truths  appear on every iPhone—not only because it offers the basic civics education that every American needs, but because it is a welcome corrective to the corrosive histories peddled by partisans.”

—Casey N. Cep,  Harvard Magazine

“In her epic new work, Jill Lepore helps us learn from whence we came.”

— Oprah Magazine

“Sweeping and propulsive.”

“ ‘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.

― Huffington Post

“It's an audacious undertaking to write a readable history of America, and Jill Lepore is more than up to the task. But  These Truths  is also an astute exploration of the ways in which the country is living up to its potential, and where it is not.”

— Business Insider

“Gutsy, lyrical, and expressive… [ These Truths ] is a perceptive and necessary contribution to understanding the American condition of late.… It captures the fullness of the past, where hope rises out of despair, renewal out of destruction, and forward momentum out of setbacks.”

—Jack E. Davis,  Chicago Tribune

“Lepore’s brilliant book,  These Truths , rings as clear as a church bell, the lucid, welcome yield of clear thinking and a capable, curious mind.”

—Karen R. Long,  Newsday

“ A splendid rendering —filled with triumph, tragedy, and hope—that will please Lepore’s readers immensely and win her many new ones.”

“An ambitious and provocative attempt to interpret American history as an effort to fulfull and maintain certain fundamental principles . . . Lepore is a historian with wide popular appeal, and this comprehensive work will answer readers’ questions about who we are as a nation.”

“In this time of disillusionment with American politics, Jill Lepore’s beautifully written book should be essential reading for everyone who cares about the country’s future. Her history of the United States reminds us of the dilemmas that have plagued the country and the institutional strengths that have allowed us to survive as a republic for over two centuries. At a minimum, her book should be required reading for every federal officeholder.”

—Robert Dallek, author of Franklin D. Roosevelt

"No one has written with more passion and brilliance about how a flawed and combustible America kept itself tethered to the transcendent ideals on which it was founded. If the country is to recover from its current crisis, These Truths will illuminate the way."

—Gary Gerstle, author of Liberty and Coercion

“Who can write a comprehensive yet lucid history of the sprawling United States in a single volume? Only Jill Lepore has the verve, wit, range, and insights to pull off this daring and provocative book. Interweaving many lively biographies, These Truths illuminates the origins of the passions and causes, which still inspire and divide Americans in an age that needs all the truth we can find.”

—Alan Taylor, author of American Revolutions

“Lepore brings a scholar's comprehensive rigor and a poet's lyrical precision to this singular single-volume history of the United States. Understanding America's past, as she demonstrates, has always been a central American project. She 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

“Anyone interested in the future of the Republic must read this book. One of our greatest historians succeeds, where so many have failed, to make sense of the whole canvas of our history. Without ignoring the horrors of conquest, slavery or recurring prejudices, she manages nonetheless to capture the epic quality of the American past. With passion, compassion, wit, and remarkable insight, Lepore brings it all to life, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. This is a manifesto for our necessarily shared future.”

—Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why it Matters

“In this inspiring and enlightening book, Jill Lepore accomplishes the grand task of telling us what we need to know about our past in order to be good citizens today. Avoiding political and ideological agendas, she confronts the contradictions that come from being born a land of both liberty and slavery, but she uses such conflicts to find meaning—and hope—in the tale of America’s progress.”

—Walter Isaacson, University Professor of History, Tulane, author of The Innovators

"Lepore is a truly gifted writer with profound insight."

"This vivid history brings alive the contradictions and hypocrisies of the land of the free"

- David Aaronovitch, The Times

"A history for the 21st century, far more inclusive than the standard histories of the past"

"Monumental ... a crucial work for presenting a fresh and clear-sighted narrative of the entire story ... 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

"Jill Lepore is that rare combination in modern life of intellect, originality and style"

- Amanda Foreman, TLS

A brilliant, revelatory account of the Cold War origins of the data-mad, algorithmic twenty-first century, from the author of the acclaimed international bestseller,  These Truths .

The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge--decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica. Silicon Valley likes to imagine it has no past but the scientists of Simulmatics are the long-dead grandfathers of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Borrowing from psychological warfare, they used computers to predict and direct human behavior, deploying their “People Machine” from New York, Cambridge, and Saigon for clients that included John Kennedy’s presidential campaign, the  New York Times , Young & Rubicam, and, during the Vietnam War, the Department of Defense. Jill Lepore, distinguished Harvard historian and  New Yorker  staff writer, unearthed from the archives the almost unbelievable story of this long-vanished corporation, and of the women hidden behind it. In the 1950s and 1960s, Lepore argues, Simulmatics invented the future by building the machine in which the world now finds itself trapped and tormented, algorithm by algorithm.

“A person can't help but feel inspired by the riveting intelligence and joyful curiosity of Jill Lepore.  Knowing that there is a mind like hers in the world is a hope-inducing thing.”

            --George Saunders

“Everything Lepore writes is distinguished by intelligence, eloquence, and fresh insight.  If Then  is that, and even more: It’s absolutely fascinating, excavating a piece of little-known American corporate history that reveals a huge amount about the way we live today and the companies that define the modern era.”

            --Susan Orlean

“Data science, Jill Lepore reminds us in this brilliant book, has a past, and she tells it through the engrossing story of Simulmatics, the tiny, long-forgotten company that helped invent our data-obsessed world, in which prediction is seemingly the only knowledge that matters. A captivating, deeply incisive work.”

            —Frederik  Logevall , Pulitzer Prize-winning author of  Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam

“Think today’s tech giants invented data mining and market manipulation? Think again. In this page-turning, eye-opening history, Jill Lepore reveals the Cold War roots of the tech-saturated present, in a thrilling tale that moves from the campaigns of Eisenhower and Kennedy to ivied think tanks, Madison Avenue ad firms, and the hamlets of Vietnam. Told with verve, grace, and humanity,  If Then  is an essential, sobering story for understanding our times.”

—Margaret O’Mara, author of  The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

“It didn’t all start with Facebook. We have long been fascinated with the potential of using computing technology to predict human behavior. In another fast-paced narrative, Jill Lepore brilliantly uncovers the history of the Simulmatics Corp, which launched the volatile mix of computing, politics and personal behavior that now divides our nation, feeds on private information, and weakens the strength our democratic institutions. If you want to know where this all started, you need not look any further--read this book!”

— Julian Zelizer, author of  Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker and the Rise of the New Republican Party 

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and is also a staff writer at  The New Yorker . A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, her many books include the international bestseller,  These Truths .

A New York Times and National Bestseller and Winner of the 2015 American History Book Prize

"Ms. Lepore’s lively, surprising and occasionally salacious history is far more than the story of a comic strip. The author, a professor of history at Harvard, places Wonder Woman squarely in the story of women’s rights in America—a cycle of rights won, lost and endlessly fought for again. Like many illuminating histories, this one shows how issues we debate today were under contention just as vigorously decades ago, including birth control, sex education, the ways in which women can combine work and family, and the effects of 'violent entertainment' on children. 'The tragedy of feminism in the twentieth century is the way its history seemed to be forever disappearing,' Ms. Lepore writes. Her superb narrative brings that history vividly into the present, weaving individual lives into the sweeping changes of the century.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Lepore’s brilliance lies in knowing what to do with the material she has. In her hands, the Wonder Woman story unpacks not only a new cultural history of feminism, but a theory of history as well.” — New York Times Book Review   “Lepore specializes in excavating old flashpoints—forgotten or badly misremembered collisions between politics and cultural debates in America’s past. She lays out for our modern sensibility how some event or social problem was fought over by interest groups, reformers, opportunists, and “thought leaders” of the day. The result can look both familiar and disturbing, like our era’s arguments flipped in a funhouse mirror….Besides archives and comics Lepore relies on journalism, notebooks, letters, and traces of memoir left by the principals, as well as interviews with surviving colleagues, children, and extended family. Her discipline is worthy of a first-class detective….Lepore convinces us that we should know more about early feminists whose work Wonder Woman drew on and carried forward….A key spotter of connections, Lepore retrieves a remarkably recognizable feminist through-line, showing us 1920s debates about work-life balance, for example, that sound like something from The Atlantic in the past decade.” —New York Review of Books   “Even non-comix nerds (or those too young to remember Lynda Carter) will marvel at Jill Lepore’s deep dive into the real-world origins of the Amazonian superhero with the golden lasso. The fact that a polyamory enthusiast created her partly as a tribute to the reproductive-rights pioneer Margaret Sanger is, somehow, only the fourth or fifth most interesting thing in Ms. Woman’s bizarre background.” —New York Magazine   “With a defiantly unhurried ease, Lepore reconstructs the prevailing cultural mood that birthed the idea of Wonder Woman, carefully delineating the conceptual debt the character owes to early-20th-century feminism in general and the birth control movement in particular….Again and again, she distills the figures she writes about into clean, simple, muscular prose, making unequivocal assertions that carry a faint electric charge…[and] attain a transgressive, downright badass swagger.” —Slate   “Deftly combines biography and cultural history to trace the entwined stories of Marston, Wonder Woman, and 20th-century feminism….Lepore – a professor of American history at Harvard, a New Yorker writer, and the author of “Book of Ages” – is an endlessly energetic and knowledgeable guide to the fascinating backstory of Wonder Woman. She’s particularly skillful at showing the subtle process by which personal details migrate from life into art.” —Christian Science Monitor   “Wonder Woman, everyone's favorite female superhero (bulletproof bracelets, hello!), gets the Lasso of Truth treatment in this illuminating biography. Lepore, a Harvard prof and New Yorker writer, delves into the complicated family life of Wonder Woman's creator (who invented the lie detector, BTW), examines the use of bondage in his comics, and highlights the many ways in which the beloved Amazonian princess has come to embody feminism.” —Cosmopolitan   “The Secret History of Wonder Woman relates a tale so improbable, so juicy, it’ll have you saying, “Merciful Minerva!”… an astonishingly thorough investigation of the man behind the world’s most popular female superhero…. Lepore has assembled a vast trove of images and deploys them cunningly. Besides a hefty full-color section of Wonder Woman art in the middle, there are dozens of black-and-white pictures scattered throughout the text. Many of these are panels from Marston’s comics that mirror events in his own life. Combined with Lepore’s zippy prose, it all makes for a supremely engaging reading experience.” —Etelka Lehoczky, NPR   “If it makes your head spin to imagine a skimpily clad pop culture icon as (spoiler alert!) a close relation of feminist birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, then prepare to be dazzled by the truths revealed in historian Jill Lepore’s “The Secret History of Wonder Woman.” The story behind Wonder Woman is sensational, spellbinding and utterly improbable. Her origins lie in the feminism of the early 1900s, and the intertwined dramas that surrounded her creation are the stuff of pulp fiction and tabloid scandal….It took a super-sleuth to uncover the mysteries of this intricate history, hidden from view for more than half a century. With acrobatic research prowess, muscular narrative chops and disarming flashes of humor, Lepore rises to the challenge, bringing to light previously unknown details and deliberately obfuscated connections.” —San Francisco Chronicle   “This captivating, sometimes racy, charming illustrated history is one part biography of the character and one part biography of her fascinating creator, psychologist and inventor William Moulton Marston—an early feminist who believed, way before his time, that the world would be a better place if only women were running it….In the process of bringing her ‘superhero’ to life in this very carefully researched, witty secret ‘herstory,’ Lepore herself emerges as a kind of superheroine: a woman on a mission—as energetic, powerful, brilliant and provocative as her subject.” —Good Housekeeping   “This book is important, readable scholarship, making the connection between popular culture and the deeper history of the American woman’s fight for equality….Lepore restores Wonder Woman to her rightful and righteous place.” —The Kansas City Star “Fascinating…often brilliant….Through assiduous research (the endnotes comprise almost a third of the book and are often very interesting reading), Lepore unravels a hidden history, and in so doing links her subjects’ lives to some of the most important social movements of the era. It’s a remarkable, thought-provoking achievement.” —Bookpage   “The Marston family’s story is ripe for psychoanalysis. And so is The Secret History , since it raises interesting questions about what motivates writers to choose the subjects of their books. Having devoted her last work to Jane Franklin Mecom, Benjamin Franklin’s sister, Lepore clearly has a passion for intelligent, opinionated women whose legacies have been overshadowed by the men they love. In her own small way, she’s helping women get the justice they deserve, not unlike her tiara’d counterpart….It has nearly everything you might want in a page-turner: tales of S&M, skeletons in the closet, a believe-it-or-not weirdness in its biographical details, and something else that secretly powers even the most “serious” feminist history—fun.” —Entertainment Weekly   “An origin story far deeper, weirder, and kinkier than anything a cartoonist ever invented.” —Vulture   “Lepore restores Wonder Woman to her rightful place as an essential women’s rights icon in this dynamically researched and interpreted, spectacularly illustrated, downright astounding work of discovery that injects new zest into the history of feminism.” —Booklist (*starred review*)

“The fullest and most fascinating portrait ever created about the complicated, unconventional family that inspired one of the most enduring feminist icons in pop culture…. The Secret History of Wonder Woman is its own magic lasso, one that compels history to finally tell the truth about Wonder Woman—and compels the rest of us to behold it.” — Los Angeles Times

“ The Secret History of Wonder Woman  is as racy, as improbable, as awesomely righteous, and as filled with curious devices as an episode of the comic book itself. In the nexus of feminism and popular culture, Jill Lepore has found a revelatory chapter of American history. I will never look at Wonder Woman’s bracelets the same way again.” —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home  

"Hugely entertaining." -- The Atlantic

“ Lepore has an astonishing story and tells it extremely well. She acts as a sort of lie detector, but proceeds through elegant narrative rather than binary test. Sentences are poised, adverbs rare. Each chapter is carefully shaped. At a time when few are disposed to see history as a branch of literature, Lepore occupies a prominent place in American letters. Her microhistories weave compelling lives into larger stories.” —The Daily Beast   “In the spirited, thoroughly reported "The Secret History of Wonder Woman," Jill Lepore recounts the fascinating details behind the Amazonian princess' origin story….[Lepore]seamlessly shifts from the micro to the macro….A panel depicting this labor unrest is just one of scores that appear throughout Lepore's book, further amplifying the author's vivid prose.” —Newsday   “A Harvard professor with impeccable scholarly credentials, Lepore treats her subject seriously, as if she is writing the biography of a feminist pioneer like Margaret Sanger, the founder of the birth control movement — which this book is, to an extent….Through extensive research and a careful reading of the Wonder Woman comic books, she argues convincingly that the story of this character is an indelible chapter in the history of women’s rights.” —Miami Herald  

A Finalist for the 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction

From one of our most accomplished and widely admired historians, a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin’s youngest sister and a history of history itself. Like her brother, Jane Franklin was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator. Unlike him, she was a mother of twelve. Benjamin Franklin, who wrote more letters to his sister than he wrote to anyone else, was the original American self-made man; his sister spent her life caring for her children. They left very different traces behind. Making use of an amazing cache of little- studied material, including documents, objects, and portraits only just discovered, Jill Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life in a way that illuminates not only this one woman but an entire world—a world usually lost to history. Lepore’s life of Jane Franklin, with its strikingly original vantage on her remarkable brother, is at once a wholly different account of the founding of the United States and one of the great untold stories of American history and letters: a life unknown.

The American Past: A History of Contradictions

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By Andrew Sullivan

• Sept. 14, 2018

THESE TRUTHS A History of the United States By Jill Lepore Illustrated. 932 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $39.95.

It isn’t until you start reading it that you realize how much we need a book like this one at this particular moment. “These Truths,” by Jill Lepore — a professor at Harvard and a staff writer at The New Yorker — is a one-volume history of the United States, constructed around a traditional narrative, that takes you from the 16th to the 21st century. It tries to take in almost everything, an impossible task, but I’d be hard-pressed to think she could have crammed more into these 932 highly readable pages. It covers the history of political thought, the fabric of American social life over the centuries, classic “great man” accounts of contingencies, surprises, decisions, ironies and character, and the vivid experiences of those previously marginalized: women, African-Americans, Native Americans, homosexuals. It encompasses interesting takes on democracy and technology, shifts in demographics, revolutions in economics and the very nature of modernity. It’s a big sweeping book, a way for us to take stock at this point in the journey, to look back, to remind us who we are and to point to where we’re headed.

This is not an account of relentless progress. It’s much subtler and darker than that. It reminds us of some simple facts so much in the foreground that we must revisit them: “Between 1500 and 1800, roughly two and a half million Europeans moved to the Americas; they carried 12 million Africans there by force; and as many as 50 million Native Americans died, chiefly of disease. … Taking possession of the Americas gave Europeans a surplus of land; it ended famine and led to four centuries of economic growth.” Nothing like this had ever happened in world history; and nothing like it is possible again. The land was instantly a refuge for religious dissenters, a new adventure in what we now understand as liberalism and a brutal exercise in slave labor and tyranny. It was a vast, exhilarating frontier and a giant, torturing gulag at the same time. Over the centuries, in Lepore’s insightful telling, it represented a giant leap in productivity for humankind: “Slavery was one kind of experiment, designed to save the cost of labor by turning human beings into machines. Another kind of experiment was the invention of machines powered by steam.” It was an experiment in the pursuit of happiness, but it was in effect the pursuit of previously unimaginable affluence.

And, of course, it was and is full of contradictions: A radically new secularism founded it, and a political-religious fervor came to define it. As industrialization accelerated, and modernity beckoned, Americans turned back to God: Before the start of the Second Great Awakening , at the end of the 18th century, “a scant one in 10 Americans were church members; by the time it ended, that ratio had risen to eight in 10.” And these religious waves advanced the cause of the spiritual equality of all human beings, which in turn became political equality. “The self-evident, secular truths of the Declaration of Independence became, to evangelical Americans, the truths of revealed religion” is Lepore’s insight. And argument raged from the get-go: constant, careening, apocalyptic and at times elevated discourse about real things, vital things, in primary colors, and with passion. All these crosscurrents — reason and faith, truth and propaganda, black and white, slave and free, immigrant and native, industry and agriculture — ripple through this history, with one obvious period where the country simply came apart in the bloodiest civil conflict in history.

No country before or since has been this convulsed with conflict and wealth. No country has been both a republic and effectively an empire across an entire continent. No country had ever been defined as one of strangers and travelers, where waves and waves of immigration constantly churned through society, in what one reformer in 1837 called “the boldest experiment upon the stability of government ever made in the annals of time.” No people were as passionate both for slavery and for freedom. The Civil War, in fact, revealed that there were effectively two countries fighting for supremacy on one continent. The Southern states showed themselves to be profoundly hostile to democracy and civil equality, as any system based on white supremacy has to be. Secessionists, Lepore brutally demonstrates, “were attempting to build a modern, pro-slavery, antidemocratic state.” This meant suppression of dissent and extirpation of free speech: “One of the first things the new state of Georgia did was to pass a law that made dissent” against secession “punishable by death.” The other country was built on the First Amendment.

The war itself beggars belief. In one single battle, 24,000 men were casualties. More than 750,000 Americans died over all, from wounds and disease. Even today, that number numbs. And yet this cathartic breakthrough for freedom nonetheless came to be alloyed. Lincoln was murdered by a white supremacist. Reconstruction — a surreal and glorious period when Confederate veterans were barred from voting and freed slaves exercised real power in the South — was abandoned in a petty political deal over a presidential ticket. Jim Crow must count as the most bitter, resentful and wicked response to defeat by the losing side in any civil war. It suggested, indeed, that the Civil War would never end, merely wax and wane. And its toll on the human spirit and the black body was matched only by its evil. From Jackson’s massacre of Native Americans to the Southern labor camps to the full embrace of torture in the Bush-Cheney administration is a single, consistent and evil line.

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“If we simply stick with the same tools, the disease might make a comeback.”

Warts and all

An eye-opening history of the United States.

Over the years, I’ve read a lot of books about history, especially American history. I never get tired of looking closely at seminal events, such as the Vietnam War , and figures I admire, such as the global heath hero Jim Grant .

These Truths: A History of the United States , by the Harvard historian and New Yorker contributor Jill Lepore, is not a deep or comprehensive account of individual events or people. The book covers centuries of history in its 800 pages, so Lepore can offer only quick glimpses at major events such as America’s first presidential impeachment (only three sentences) and doesn’t even get a chance to mention pivotal figures such as Lewis and Clark.

But with the exception of a brief section covering the past 20 years (more on this below), I loved the book and hope lots of people read it. In keeping with its title, it’s the most honest account of the American story I’ve ever read, and one of the most beautifully written. Lepore comments in her conclusion that simplistic, feel-good accounts of our past undermine and belittle “the American experiment, making it … a daffy, reassuring bedtime story.” These Truths is just the opposite.

While many good history books provide perspectives beyond those of the traditional “great men” of history, Lepore’s book makes diverse points of view central to the narrative. She shows you all the ironies and contradictions in American history.

For example, Lepore tells you about Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress. Smith had the courage to stand up to abuses in Congress; she was particularly passionate in speaking out against Joseph McCarthy’s hateful hunt for communists in government. And yet she also willingly participated in crusades against “homosexuals and other sex perverts in government,” in the language of the Congressional hearings.

Another contradiction I was not aware of relates to the GI Bill, which gave a huge boost to my dad’s education and career after he served during World War II. After acknowledging that the GI Bill was one of the wisest investments our country has ever made, she points out that it actually had a negative impact on African Americans, women, and gay people who fought for their country in World War II—most of whom were denied GI benefits.

By far the biggest contradiction in our country’s history is one that Lepore weaves into every part of her book: the fact that America was founded on assertions of liberty and sovereignty while practicing African slavery and Native American conquest.

This contradiction was obvious to America’s slaves, many of whom sided with the British during the American Revolution because they knew they had a much better chance of being freed if the British won. One of George Washington’s own slaves, Harry Washington , escaped from Mount Vernon during the war and fought alongside Lord Dunmore , the royal governor of Virginia. Harry Washington later fled to Sierra Leone and became the leader of a group of revolutionaries who declared independence there.

The Emancipation Proclamation represented an important step in reconciling this contradiction. “American slavery …. had stolen the lives of millions and crushed the souls of millions more,” writes Lepore. “It had poisoned a people and a nation…. It was not over yet. But at last, an end lay within sight.” Thirty years after Lincoln’s proclamation, Frederick Douglass wrote, “The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own Constitution.”

Despite all of Lepore’s research and writing, I found the final section of the book to be out of keeping with what preceded it. This section did not sound like it was written by a professor who excels at detached historical analysis. Especially in the section about the 2008 financial crisis, it reads like the work of a critic who is caught up in the passions of the moment.

Even so, I highly recommend the book. It’s packed with amazing details I had never read before. For example, there were more than 100 incidents of violence between members of Congress between 1830 and 1860. But more important, it’s a good reminder that there’s a lot more to American history than most of us learn in school. These truths are ones we all need to hear.

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These Truths: A History of the United States Hardcover – Illustrated, 19 Oct. 2018

"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." Simon Winchester, New Statesman

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 dedication to inquiry, fearless and unflinching", writes Jill Lepore in a ground-breaking investigation into the American past that places truth at the centre of the nation's history. Telling the story of America, beginning in 1492, These Truths asks whether the course of events has proven the nation's founding truths or belied them. Finding meaning in contradiction, Lepore weaves American history into a tapestry of faith and hope, of peril and prosperity, of technological progress and moral anguish. This spellbinding chronicle offers an authoritative new history of a great, and greatly troubled, nation.

• ISBN-10 0393635244
• ISBN-13 978-0393635249
• Edition 1st
• Publisher W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date 19 Oct. 2018
• Language English
• Dimensions 16.51 x 4.83 x 24.38 cm
• Print length 960 pages
• See all details

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Product description

--Anand Giridharadas, The Guardian

"...[an] excellent book...What Lepore does, she does well. You can read her, then look at America today, and think: "So that's how it happened.""

--David Aaronovitch, The Times

"...[a] 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

"Harvard professor Lepore's invaluable political history serves as a refresher course on the American experiment, based on three political ideas - "political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people"...By emphasising founding fathers and presidents, and charismatic leaders on both sides of the political divide, she makes history vivid."

--The Guardian

"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."

--André Spicer, Times Higher Education

"...exciting and page-turningly fascinating, in one of those rare history books that can be read with pleasure for its sheer narrative energy."

--New Statesman

"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."

--Armando Iannucci, 2018 s best books, The Big Issue

"Because a new, single-volume history has been long overdue, it seemed, she [Lepore] says with thrilling audacity, 'worth a try'. But These Truths is as much a moral manual as a work of history: 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

"In her [Lepore's] telling, the past is filled with women and men with richly imagined, if clashing, visions of the future. This is what makes this book feel timely and necessary: it is, as she puts it, a 'civics primer' as well as a gripping story...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."

--History Today

"Lepore is a truly gifted writer with profound insight into those she writes about...[a] magnificent book..."

--The Spectator

"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."

About the Author

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (19 Oct. 2018)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 960 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393635244
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393635249
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.51 x 4.83 x 24.38 cm
• Best Sellers Rank: 258,142 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books )

About the author

Jill lepore.

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale in 1995. Her first book, "The Name of War," won the Bancroft Prize; her 2005 book, "New York Burning," was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2008 she published "Blindspot," a mock eighteenth-century novel, jointly written with Jane Kamensky. Lepore's most recent book, "The Whites of Their Eyes," is a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.

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Customers find the book highly informative and lucid, with a different angle on history. They also say it's well worth persisting with.

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Customers find the book highly informative and historically informed. They also say it links the nation's founding fathers with the Civil War.

"...It offers an historically informed perspective , directly linking the nation's founding fathers with twentieth century Civil Rights campaigns and..." Read more

"...This book is literally mind-expanding ." Read more

"...understand how the US ended up where it did at this time, this is a scholarly , lucid and highly informative account...." Read more

"...A different angle on history , one that was incredibly glossed over in the past. The author does not shatter the American myth, but she enriches it...." Read more

Customers find the book well worth persisting, and say it's an exceptional and mighty piece of work.

"...Whilst this is a lengthy detailed book, it is well worth persisting ...." Read more

"...rights and media, has at least doubled thanks to this exceptional and mighty piece of work .But there's more...." Read more

"...This is not a quick or easy book, but is well worth the time and effort that you will need to invest." Read more

" Excellent read ! Wonderful way to conceptualize our political history in one volume. Would definitely recommend to a friend." Read more

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Why Jeff Stelling quit Soccer Saturday - sad truth and what he's doing now

Jeff Stelling left UK football fans bereft when he stepped down as the host of Soccer Saturday and he has revealed just what made him leave Sky Sports

• 04:00, 17 Aug 2024

Sky Sports legend Jeff Stelling quit Soccer Saturday as it was taking a serious toll on his health.

The 68-year-old TV icon stunned fans as he left the broadcaster at the end of the 2022/2023 season. Stelling had worked for Sky since 1992 and was the face of the much-loved show for 25 years where his warmth, humour and encyclopaedic knowledge of the game would often shine through.

Speaking on his shock departure in January of this year, the former presenter lifted the lid on his exit from Sky , revealing that he believed that his "views" were no longer considered by the company hierarchy. Stelling candidly opened up on the "battle" was facing each week, no longer getting to work with his friends on the show and even sorrowfully disclosed how the job was making him unwell.

Talking to The Guardian , he opened up on how working the show left him feeling ill most weekends and he grew tired of "fighting" to be heard. He said: “Even though I’d been there a long time, I felt some of my views weren’t considered at all. Every week I was fighting a battle. I got tired of fighting and it was making me ill. Eventually, I went to Sky’s management and said: ‘This is making me unwell. I’ve got to step away from it.'"

He continued: “I’m almost ashamed to say it because my dad worked in a steelworks and would come back from his shift covered in grime and muck and absolutely exhausted. He would never have allowed me to say I was shattered after a TV show. But I felt it was making me ill so I had to step away.”

Speaking as he announced his decision to call it a day, Stelling said that he had "loved every moment" but that it was the "right time to move on". However, away from his health concerns, there was also the matter of Stelling's close friends and colleagues Matt Le Tissier, Phil Thompson and Charlie Nicholas leaving the beloved Saturday show.

The three contributors, along with Paul Merson, charmed viewers with their camaraderie and banter. However It was in 2020 that Thompson, Le Tissier and Nicholas, were all axed from Sky in a dramatic shake-up that caused Stelling great upset.

Coming in response to the pandemic and pressures to revamp the show, the news hit Stelling hard and was a possible spark in his decision to leave the show for good. Elaborating to The Guardian , Stelling revealed how he find out in a phone call that Thompson, Le Tissier Nicholas were being ousted from the show.

The dropped pundits expressed their disappointment but accepted the decision gracefully. Thompson and Le Tissier paid tribute to their former colleagues while Nicholas kept his powder dry. However Stelling was particularly rocked by the news, posting on X: "One of my saddest days ever at Sky Sports with the departure of three of my best mates. They have been part of a team that for me was the best."

Since ending his association with Sky, Stelling has landed a job as the host of talkSPORT's breakfast show, alongside Ally McCoist, and was also awarded an MBE in the New Year's Honours list for his services to sport, broadcasting and charity.

Stelling is also on tour with 'An evening with Jeff Stelling' , alongside his former Sky Sports colleague, Bianca Westwood. The nights promise anecdotes from his storied career as well as a Q&A where fans will get a chance to grill the TV legend.

Following Stelling and co's departure, the future of Soccer Saturday was uncertain for many, however the decision was made to anoint Sky Sports anchor Simon Thomas as the man to step into Stelling's huge shoes. Thomas took on the role at the start of the 2023/2024 season and the 52-year-old began his new role by paying tribute to the man he was hired to replace, underlining the respect and admiration he has for Stelling .

"I want to say this, it is an absolute honour to take on the role of hosting this quite brilliant show and if I can do even half the job that the legend Jeff Stelling did over the last 25 years, I will have done something right." he said.

Even after Stelling's exit, Soccer Saturday is still going strong with the likes of Thomas, Clinton Morrison, Sue Smith, Paul Merson and Michael Dawson among the regular cast.

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MORE ON Sky Sports Jeff Stelling Phil Thompson Paul Merson Charlie Nicholas Matt Le Tissier Simon Thomas Sky Sports News Sky Television Ltd.

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