The Story of America – Essays on Origins - Hardcover

Lepore, Jill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 069115399X ISBN 13: 9780691153995

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Investigates American origin stories - from John Smith's account of the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural address - to show how American democracy is bound up with the history of print.

About this title

Review:

"As both a Jeremiah and a troubadour, Jill Lepore has one of the most distinctive voices in American literary life. So skilled in the art of the essay, she has a sense of narrative that is breathtaking. She tells resounding, surprising stories about real people forging American roots and development, but always through a deeply documented history. Both subtly and explosively, Lepore brings the power of history right into your lap and makes you shudder at just how deeply tangled past and present really are."--David W. Blight, author of American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era

"Jill Lepore is one of America's most interesting scholars--a distinguished historian and a brilliant essayist. This prolific collection of articles and essays is a remarkable body of work that moves from early America to our present, contentious age."--Alan Brinkley, author of The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century

"Jill Lepore is one of our finest historians of the battle over the story called 'America, ' which, as she says, is constantly being fought over and over. In this stunning collection of essays, Lepore makes the case that the rise of democracy is bound up with the history of its reading and writing. That history is conflicted, ragged, and contradictory but, in Lepore's capable hands, as gripping and compelling as a novel."--Cathy N. Davidson, Duke University

"Concise, clear, vivid, witty, insightful, and rich in turns of phrase. More than any other historian I know, Lepore cares about good writing and has a talent for making sophisticated ideas accessible to a broad readership."--Alan Taylor, author of The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies

"Jill Lepore's storytelling power is on full display here. As much literary exercises as historical inquiries, these essays are compact, highly readable, and often written from an unexpected angle. Combining a lightness of touch with the authority of a historian who knows her field inside out, Lepore moves effortlessly through the length of American history."--Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University

"Runner-up for the 2013 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, PEN American Center"

"In this collection of essays (most of which previously appeared in The New Yorker), Lepore illuminates the various ways in which the story of our nation has been formulated as a narrative. From John Smith's largely fictionalized account of the founding of Jamestown, in 1607, to Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration address, these pieces comprise an examination of the nature of history and an exploration of how the way we tell our story has shaped the story itself."--NewYorker.com's Page-Turner blog

"The Story of America, like A is for American, serves up a delightful smorgasbord of synecdoches and allegories of the evolution of American democracy. . . . [A] deeply satisfying book."---Amanda Foreman, Times Literary Supplement

"Anyone who has not yet had the pleasure of reading Jill Lepore might begin with The Story of America: Essays on Origins. Ms. Lepore is a gifted historian and a contributor to the New Yorker, where most of these essays appeared. Her subjects range from John Smith and the founding of Jamestown to the murder of a Connecticut family in 2007 by a pair of drug-addled drifters. She drops in on, among others, Andrew Jackson, Noah Webster, Edgar Allen Poe and Charlie Chan (the real one). Her voice is always fresh, her prose engaging and her insights original."---Fergus M. Bordewich, Wall Street Journal

"Ranging from colonial times to the present, the essays are liberally sprinkled with fascinating facts--etymologies of 'ballot' and 'booze, ' or that Davy Crockett was the first presidential candidate to write a campaign autobiography. Even the footnotes contain buried treasures; history buffs and general readers alike will savor this collection."--Publishers Weekly

About the Author:

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at the New Yorker. Her books include The Mansion of Happiness, The Whites of Their Eyes (Princeton), and Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 069115399X
• ISBN 13: 9780691153995
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432