So before you start looking for a good book, think about what interests you most. Most American history books will focus on a certain theme.
Some start with Columbus’s arrival, while others include the history of Native Americans before settlers arrived. The key is to find one that covers the timeframe you’re interested in studying. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of history books, especially if you want to study a particular event or era in depth.īut what if you just want a full telling of the history of America? There are books for that, as well. Even children may find school textbooks inadequate if they’re really interested in learning history. It likely had a condensed history of America, covering wars, important political figures and big events.įor those interested in history, though, the thirst for information continues long after graduation. In school, you were handed a history textbook and told to read it. To answer that question, Lepore traces the intertwined histories of American politics, law, journalism, and technology, from the colonial town meeting to the nineteenth century party machine, from talk radio to twenty first century Internet polls, from Magna Carta to the Patriot Act, from the printing press to Facebook News. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? These Truths tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation’s truths, or belied them.
And it rests, too, on a fearless dedication to inquiry, Lepore argues, because self government depends on it. The American experiment rests on three ideas―”these truths,” Jefferson called them―political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. Written in elegiac prose, Lepore’s groundbreaking investigation places truth itself―a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence―at the center of the nation’s history.
In the most ambitious one volume American history in decades, award winning historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, an urgently needed reckoning with the beauty and tragedy of American history.
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