These Truths
A History of the United States
-
-
4.3 • 307개의 평가
-
-
- US$20.99
출판사 설명
New York Times Bestseller
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.
Two hundred fifty years after the United States declared its independence and cast off tyranny, distinguished historian Jill Lepore reconsiders the sweep and direction of American history in this revised edition of her international best-selling book These Truths. Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Lepore’s history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—“these truths,” Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. 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. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, the nature of technological change, and now the age of Trump. “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. With These Truths, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.
사용자 리뷰
Interesting perspective
Not a favorite but it was a good perspective.
Brilliant - and foreboding
Jill Lepore’s These Truths is a remarkable history of these United States, telling truths that are often denied or glossed over in the histories most of us are taught in schools. Her descriptions of the nation’s founding are riveting, and painful, as she acknowledges the true original sin of slavery and the compromises reached in the nation’s troubled birth, and growth, if not real maturation.
Her survey throughout our history up until the first Trump election is generally as sharp as the beginning of the book, until I believe she gives too much weight to political insider and pollster meanderings. But I also believe her foreboding accurately warns that our experiment in Democracy may not survive intact, and may at best be badly bruised with millions of innocent folks hurt and even dying from the cruelty of Trump and his MAGA cohorts.
I’m glad I read the book and feel I learned some very valuable facts and insights. And while I’m better informed I’m still very scared for our country’s future.
Whole History
An excellent effort in the ongoing effort to correct and complete the historical record. Those mired in a sixth-grader’s understanding of history and who are incapable of grasping nuance and complexity should steer clear or risk having the imperfections of their less-than-one-dimensional heroes exposed and and their own fragile sensibilities offended. In other words, they risk growing up.