Deschutes Public Library

These truths, a history of the United States, Jill Lepore

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 793-880) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

These truths

bibliography

1021807194

Jill Lepore

a history of the United States

"Lepore{u2019}s groundbreaking investigation places truth itself{u2015}a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence{u2015}at the center of the nation{u2019}s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas{u2015}"these truths," Jefferson called them{u2015}political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too, on a fearless dedication to inquiry, Lepore argues, because self-government depends on it. 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{u2019}s truths, or belied them. 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. "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. "It can{u2019}t be shirked. There{u2019}s nothing for it but to get to know it.""--, adapted from Amazon.com