Co-sponsored by the William P. Clements Department of History, SMU
In the most ambitious one-volume book on American history in decades, award-winning historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore offers an account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. Written in captivating prose, These Truths: A History of the United States weaves American history into a tapestry of faith and hope, of peril and prosperity, of technological progress and moral anguish. Filled with sketches of Americans from John Winthrop and Frederick Douglass to Pauli Murray and Phyllis Schlafly, These Truths offers authoritative new insights about a great, and greatly troubled, nation. "A nation born in contradiction will fight forever over the meaning of its history," Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. "The past is an inheritance, a gift and a burden," These Truths observes.
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University. Her many books include The Secret History of Wonder Woman, a national bestseller, and Book of Ages, a finalist for the National Book Award.
“Jill Lepore accomplishes the grand task of telling us what we need to know about our past in order to be good citizens today. Avoiding political and ideological agendas, she confronts the contradictions that come from being born a land of both liberty and slavery, but she uses such conflicts to find meaning—and hope—in the tale of America’s progress.”—Walter Isaacson
This book is a Moveable Feast Book Club selection.