I mean, I started the project, obviously, a while ago, with the question of what kind of distance to encourage from the present - that I wanted a reader to immerse herself in this past and try to pull away from the present. I struggled in framing the book, especially as it got closer to publication. I could easily overthink why I chose those. I guess the Niebuhr quote is more of a warning. I think of the Lincoln quote less of a warning than as a call, not to arms, but to action. I want to ask about the quotes you’ve chosen as epigraphs. Obviously the 90 years between them is encompassed by your narrative, but can you tell me about why you chose these two quotes, which sort of read as warnings? The primary cause would be that the strength of a great nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.” “If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. “We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” She explained that she wrote much of it during the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election.īut first, some background: The book opens with a quotation from Abraham Lincoln, and closes with Reinhold Niebuhr. I spoke with Lepore earlier this month about the book and her thoughts on publishing it in this moment. Rather, it layers massive developments with little-known, underappreciated, and sometimes searing historical anecdotes to guide readers toward today. It places a special focus on marginalized and targeted communities throughout the country’s history. It is not, however, a book about Trump. Organized around the challenges posed to generations of Americans by the Declaration of Independence, the book tracks the status of citizens’ political equality, their natural rights, and suffrage (the titular truths), over the course of four wide-ranging sections: “The Idea,” “The People,” “The State,” and “The Machine.”Īs much a long-form examination of centuries’ worth of American ideas as a straightforward political history, the book feels especially timely, occasionally reading like an urgent reminder of Americans’ collective past and responsibilities. There’s a reason just about everyone who’s read it describes the volume as “sweeping.” (It is! It has to be.)

These Truths, the Harvard professor and New Yorker staff writer’s latest vigorous offering, interrogates the American idea by splashing down in 1492 and ripping through to the election of Donald Trump over the course of 900-plus pages that wind up forming what the author calls an old-fashioned civics book.

Leave it to Jill Lepore to set out to write a book about all of American history.

Photo: Kayana Szymczak/The New York Times/Redux

Jill these truths