"The Declaration that Congress did adopt was a stunning rhetorical feat, an act of extraordinary political courage," Lepore writes. One of the earliest of the country's broken promises was slavery, which the authors of the Declaration of Independence failed to mention in their document.
She has chosen to look at America through the lens of the lens of the promises America has made to itself, and whether we've kept them. Lepore acknowledges that she's not able to cover everything: "No one could. Caro, after all, has written four titanic books about the life of just one president, and he's still going. There's way too much to pack into one book - Robert A. Writing a one-volume history of the United States is, obviously, a daunting task. Or as she writes, "The real dispute is between 'these truths' and the course of events: Does American history prove these truths, or does it belie them?" It comes from, of course, the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It's hard to think of a single passage more emblematic of the American ethos.īut has America lived up to the ideas of the founders of this country, many of whom failed to heed their own words in the first place? That's the question that forms the basis of Lepore's magnificent book. The title of Jill Lepore's new history of the United States should be instantly recognizable to all Americans. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. , Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title These Truths Subtitle A History of the United States Author Jill Lepore 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. 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. 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. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? The American experiment rests on three ideas-"these truths," Jefferson called them-political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. ), 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. Widely hailed for its "sweeping, sobering account of the American past" (
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