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.

[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.

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.)

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"‘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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"[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."

"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."

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

"Gripping, moving, and beautifully written."

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

"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."

"Sweeping and propulsive."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

★ 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.