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I'm here at Harvard University with Jill DePore.

She is one of the best-known American historians and also a columnist for The New Yorker.

I'd like to give you my conceptual and indeed highly subjective introduction to how I think

her for work.

So the book of Jill's that really made everything click for me is her book called A is for American.

And that's a book on communication.

It studies Noah Webster, Samuel Morris, Colorado, Alexander Graham Bell.

And I think of Jill's work as being fundamentally concerned with communication.

It says if there's information stored in silos around the country, around the world,

they're often distinct silos and they're somewhat hidden or encoded.

And the job of the historian, also the journalist, also the human being, is to unearth those

silos, carry materials from one to another, deal with the impermanence of information.

So she is herself performing these multiple roles.

And if I think of her different books or columns, her book on Wonder Woman is looking

to comics as a silo where there's information about American history, unearthing truths about

King Philip's war and Native American history, realizing how much of the history of the 18th

century and indeed New York City is in part a history of slavery.

...