These Truths: A History of the United States

by Jill Lepore

Overview

“Nothing short of a masterpiece.” —NPR Books
A New York Times Bestseller and a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year

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.

Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America 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. 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 wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. “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. With These Truths, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357424
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	960
Sales rank:	23,871
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Jill Lepore is the David Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. She’s also the host of the podcasts The Last Archive and Elon Musk. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, her many books include the international bestseller These Truths; If Then, longlisted for the National Book Award; and the audiobook Who Killed Truth?

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Question Stated xi

Part 1 The Idea (1492-1799)

1 The Nature of the Past 3

2 The Rulers and the Ruled 31

3 Of Wars and Revolutions 72

4 The Constitution of a Nation 109

Part 2 The People (1800-1865)

5 A Democracy of Numbers 153

6 The Soul and the Machine 189

7 Of Ships and Shipwrecks 232

8 The Face of Battle 272

Part 3 The State (1866-1945)

9 Of Citizens, Persons, and People 311

10 Efficiency and the Masses 361

11 A Constitution of the Air 421

12 The Brutality of Modernity 472

Part 4 The Machine (1946-2016)

13 A World of Knowledge 521

14 Rights and Wrongs 589

15 Battle Lines 646

16 America, Disrupted 719

Epilogue: The Question Addressed 785

Acknowledgments 791

Notes 793

Illustration Credits 881

Index 889

Editorial Reviews

"Lepore has written the most honest accounting of our country’s history that I’ve ever read."

Bill Gates

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

O, Oprah Magazine - Natalie Beach

"[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."

New York Times - Jennifer Szalai

"[These Truths] captures the fullness of the past, where hope rises out of despair, renewal out of destruction, and forward momentum out of setbacks."

Chicago Tribune - Jack E. Davis

"Sweeping and propulsive."

Vulture - Boris Kachka

"It is the story of a nation, multiracial at its founding, and those who sought to find ways to realize ‘these truths.’"

Guardian - John S. Gardner

"Those devoted to an honest reckoning with America’s past have their work cut out for them. Lepore’s book is a good place to start."

Washington Post - H. W. Brands

"It isn’t until you start reading it that you realize how much we need a book like this one at this particular moment.… Brilliant."

New York Times Book Review - Andrew Sullivan

"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."

New York Times Book Review - “100 Notable Books of 2018” Editors’ Choice

"Gripping, moving, and beautifully written."

Boston Globe - Evan Thomas

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…tries to take in almost everything, an impossible task, but I'd be hard-pressed to think [Lepore] 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…There wasn't a moment when I struggled to keep reading…We need this book. Its reach is long, its narrative fresh and the arc of its account sobering to say the least.

The New York Times Book Review - Andrew Sullivan

[Lepore's] one-volume history is elegant, readable, sobering…The size of the project is liberating and constraining at once. A book like this is both very long and very short…Keeping everything contained between two covers risks compressing the historical sprawl into one of those dense slabs more suitable for gift-giving than reading—the print equivalent of a holiday fruitcake. But in Lepore's hands, the history gets some room to breathe. She begins in 1492, with Columbus's arrival, wending her way through the next five centuries…leavening some of the essential textbook material with stories that are lesser known…Which isn't to say These Truths is an update of A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn's radically revisionist book from 1980. Yes, Lepore pays heed to Frederick Douglass and Cesar Chavez and the African-American lawyer and civil rights activist Pauli Murray, among others. But her book is less about a struggle between heroes and villains than it is about the country's often tortured approach to political equality and natural rights—truths that were supposed to be self-evident but have been treated as if they were anything but.

The New York Times - Jennifer Szalai

07/16/2018
The principles of the Declaration of Independence get betrayed, fought over, and sometimes fulfilled in this probing political history of the Unites States. Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Lepore (Book of Ages) explores how ideals of liberty, equality, and happiness have fueled conflicts from the colonial era, when American slave owners protested taxation without representation as a form of slavery, to the struggles of African-Americans, women, immigrants, and workers for freedom, votes, and civil rights. Her viewpoint is progressive—she spotlights neglected heroes like George Washington’s runaway slaves and People’s Party orator Mary Lease—but she puts forth evenhanded assessments of latter-day partisan wrangles, castigating both the alt-right and the “sanctimonious accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia” of the campus left. Lepore sometimes strains for poetic, even psychedelic, imagery—her impression of the Civil War, with “giant armies wielding unstoppable machines, as if monsters with scales of steel had been let loose on the land to maul and maraud, and to eat even the innocent,” feels like a Transformers movie—and she leaves out much historical detail to concentrate on politics, constitutional struggles, and evolving ideologies. The payoff: she unifies a complex and conflicted history into a coherent, focused, engrossing narrative with insights that resonate for modern readers. Photos. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

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

Guardian

"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

"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."

NPR - Michael Schaub

"‘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

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

Times Literary Supplement - Amanda Foreman

"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."

Walter Isaacson

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

The Times - David Aaronovitch

"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

"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."

Gary Gerstle

"With this epic work of grand chronological sweep, brilliantly illuminating the idea of truth in the history of our republic, Lepore reaffirms her place as one of one of the truly great historians of our time."

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

"Without ignoring the horrors of conquest, slavery, or recurring prejudices, Lepore manages nonetheless to capture the epic quality of the American past."

Lynn Hunt

"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

"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."

Harvard Magazine - Casey N. Cep

"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."

Newsday - Karen R. Long

"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

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

The Oprah Magazine O

"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."

New Statesman - Simon Winchester

"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."

New York Times Book Review (editors' choice)

★ 2018-05-28
The celebrated New Yorker writer and Bancroft Prize winner tells the American story."A nation born in revolution will forever struggle against chaos," writes Lepore (History/Harvard Univ.; Joe Gould's Teeth, 2016, etc.). In this mammoth, wonderfully readable history of the United States from Columbus to Trump, the author relies on primary sources to "let the dead speak for themselves," creating an enthralling, often dramatic narrative of the American political experiment based on Thomas Jefferson's "truths" of political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. The author recounts major events—the Revolution, Civil War, world wars, Vietnam, 9/11, and the war on terror—while emphasizing the importance of facts and evidence in the national story, as well as the roles of slavery ("America's Achilles' heel") and women, both absent in the founding documents. Lepore offers crisp, vivid portraits of individuals from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine to Liberator writer Maria W. Stewart and preacher David Walker to contemporaries like "rascal" Bill Clinton, sporting a "grin like a 1930s comic-strip scamp." "To study the past is to unlock the prison of the present," writes the author, noting recurrent debates about guns, abortion, and race. "Slavery wasn't an aberration in an industrial economy; slavery was its engine," she reminds. Throughout, Lepore provides sharp observations ("instead of Marx, America had Thoreau") and exquisite summaries: In World War I, "machines slaughtered the masses. Europe fell to its knees. The United States rose to its feet." She discusses the "aching want" of the Depression and the "frantic, desperate, and paranoid" politics of today. Always with style and intelligence, Lepore weaves stories of immigrants and minorities, creates moving scenes (Margaret Fuller's death in a storm off New York City), and describes the importance of photography and printed newspapers in the lives of a divided people now "cast adrift on the ocean of the Internet."A splendid rendering—filled with triumph, tragedy, and hope—that will please Lepore's readers immensely and win her many new ones.

Kirkus Reviews