Jill Lepore on the Long Sweep of American History

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

President, Barack, News, Politics, Wnyc, Obama, Lizza, Washington, Wickenden

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2018

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jill Lepore is a New Yorker staff writer and a historian at Harvard University. She tells David Remnick that her new book is the result of a dare: to tell—or even to understand—the story of this country, from the Age of Discovery through the present day, in one volume. In “These Truths,” Lepore surveys six-hundred-odd years of American history, paying particular attention to themes of immigration, suffrage, and how the media has shaped our democracy. Above all, Lepore grapples with whether the United States has lived up to the promises of its founding. She finds an America alternately fearful of change and fearful of stagnation, trapped between idealizing the past and hoping for a better future. The journey toward progress, Leporesays, is less a march than a stumble.

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1:11.9	I'm Dorothy Wickendenden. On today's Politics and More podcast, David Remnick talks with the historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore. Her new book, These Truths, is a history of the United States from the 15th century to the election of Donald Trump.
1:31.3	In our political climate, arguments about the past are absolutely everywhere.
1:35.3	Look at the turmoil over Confederate monuments or on the limits to immigration.
1:39.3	Think about the president's call that we should make America great again
1:43.3	versus the progressive view that we are always that we should make America great again versus the progressive
1:45.0	view that we are always somehow trying to make America better.
1:50.0	Jill Lippor has been writing for the New Yorker about our current political struggles, but
1:53.5	always with the long view of a historian.
1:56.2	An inner-day job, when she's not writing pieces for us, Jill's a professor of history at Harvard University,
2:02.0	and in a brand new book called These Truths, she's tackled the entire American story,
	...

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