Harvard historian Jill Lepore combines academic rigor, critical synthesis and analysis, and a lively and engaging writing style in this succinct summation of the American Experience from the day the first European adventurer set foot in the New World to the raging partisan battles of the Age of Trump.
She divides her subject into four time periods: The Idea, The People, The State and The Machine. Her purpose is to examine our allegiance to the "truths" asserted in the founding documents in the unsparing light of our shared national experience.
For all those who yawned their way through their required history classes, Lepore's book will be a revelation. "To study the past is to unlock the prison of the present," she writes. "The past is an inheritance, a gift and a burden. It can't be shirked. You carry it everywhere. There is nothing for it but to get to know it."
Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.
Click HERE to read the review from Kirkus Reviews.
Click HERE to watch an interview with Jill Lepore on C-Span's Book TV.
Click HERE to read a review from The Harvard Magazine.
Click HERE to read a feature story from the New York Times.
Click HERE to read a review from the Chicago Tribune.
Click HERE to read a review from The New Republic.
Click HERE to read a review from NPR.org.
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