Summer Reading Series: Non-Fiction
These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore
My annual personal knowledge project, beginning around Independence Day, is to read a substantive work focused on US history.
Presidential biographies and early American history are a recurring favorite and occupy significant space on my bookshelves, from the likes of Chernow, McCullough, and Philbrick. While all learned men and accomplished authors, I acknowledge that Ron, David and Nathaniel may be interpreting history through lenses that might reveal similar perspectives.
This year I’ve decided to branch out and, for starters, choose an author born in the second half of the 20th century. I landed on These Truths, written by Harvard professor Jill Lepore. The author takes on the herculean task of writing a history of the United States, from 1492 to present day.
In her introduction, Lepore tells the story of how the US Constitution was circulated before being put to the vote, and how the essential question posed anonymously by Alexander Hamilton in the first essay of the Federalist Papers, was: shall we be ruled by reason and choice, or shall we be ruled by violence and force?
Lepore contends that this is the question of American history and remains as pertinent and important today as it was in 1787. And although there is a great deal of anguish in American history, Lepore finds “an extraordinary amount of decency and hope, of prosperity and ambition, of invention and beauty.”
I suspect it will take the better part of the summer for me to digest the 900+ pages of Lepore’s work. But in a shift from my usual summer read of focused biography, I’m looking forward to experiencing her interpretative, wide-scope, fresh-perspective narrative.
-Rob