They left very different traces behind. . Scholarly bibliographies to her New Yorker essays can be found here. ", —Gary Gerstle, author of Liberty and Coercion, “Who can write a comprehensive yet lucid history of the sprawling United States in a single volume? An alliance of Algonquin tribes decimated over half the English settlements in New England, and colonial militia groups pursued them in turn across much of modern-day Connecticut and Rhode Island, slaughtering women and children along the way; torture and mercilessness occurred on both sides. . The result can look both familiar and disturbing, like our era’s arguments flipped in a funhouse mirror….Besides archives and comics Lepore relies on journalism, notebooks, letters, and traces of memoir left by the principals, as well as interviews with surviving colleagues, children, and extended family. (January 13, 2021). The future David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History was clocking hours as a secretary on temporary assignment. In her own small way, she’s helping women get the justice they deserve, not unlike her tiara’d counterpart….It has nearly everything you might want in a page-turner: tales of S&M, skeletons in the closet, a believe-it-or-not weirdness in its biographical details, and something else that secretly powers even the most “serious” feminist history—fun.” —Entertainment Weekly “An origin story far deeper, weirder, and kinkier than anything a cartoonist ever invented.” —Vulture “Lepore restores Wonder Woman to her rightful place as an essential women’s rights icon in this dynamically researched and interpreted, spectacularly illustrated, downright astounding work of discovery that injects new zest into the history of feminism.” —Booklist (*starred review*), “The fullest and most fascinating portrait ever created about the complicated, unconventional family that inspired one of the most enduring feminist icons in pop culture…. Library Journal, March 1, 1998, Grant A. Fredericksen, review of The Name of War, p. 104; February 1, 2002, Grant A. Fredericksen, review of A Is for American, p. 115. Jill Lepore, a professor of American history, in her office in Robinson Hall. What has been termed America's "first civil war" curiously faded from significance in the annals of American history by the early nineteenth century, and the author offers insight into how such obliterations become possible and even obligatory to the victor. Besides a hefty full-color section of Wonder Woman art in the middle, there are dozens of black-and-white pictures scattered throughout the text. Few books have received as much instantaneous acclaim as Harvard historian Jill Lepore’s These Truths: A History of the United States. (On teaching the writing of history, see How to Write a Paper for This Class.) Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. But she was also a mother of 12 who lived in poverty and, like most women of her era, in near total obscurity. Born 1946, in New York, NY; married Richard D. Schotter (an English professor, playwright, and lyricist); children: Jesse. Lepore received a B.A. Challenging the frequently-taught notion of the United States as a country that arose without conflict among its peoples, she shows how the ethnic minorities present during the country's early days were suppressed, and encouraged or forced to take on the ways of the Anglo founding fathers. . Lepore, who begins The Name of War with the observation that "war is a contest of injuries and of interpretation," devotes equal space to the postwar ramifications. We have long been fascinated with the potential of using computing technology to predict human behavior. But These Truths is also an astute exploration of the ways in which the country is living up to its potential, and where it is not.”, “Gutsy, lyrical, and expressive… [These Truths] is a perceptive and necessary contribution to understanding the American condition of late.… It captures the fullness of the past, where hope rises out of despair, renewal out of destruction, and forward momentum out of setbacks.”, “Lepore’s brilliant book, These Truths, rings as clear as a church bell, the lucid, welcome yield of clear thinking and a capable, curious mind.”, “An ambitious and provocative attempt to interpret American history as an effort to fulfull and maintain certain fundamental principles . Interweaving many lively biographies, These Truths illuminates the origins of the passions and causes, which still inspire and divide Americans in an age that needs all the truth we can find.”, —Alan Taylor, author of American Revolutions, “Lepore brings a scholar's comprehensive rigor and a poet's lyrical precision to this singular single-volume history of the United States. It’s a remarkable, thought-provoking achievement.” —Bookpage “The Marston family’s story is ripe for psychoanalysis. Benjamin Franklin, who wrote more letters to his sister than he wrote to anyone else, was the original American self-made man; his sister spent her life caring for her children. “[B]rilliant…insightful…It isn’t until you start reading it that you realize how much we need a book like this one at this particular moment.”, —Andrew Sullivan, The New York Times Book Review, “This sweeping, sobering account of the American past is a story not of relentless progress but of conflict and contradiction, with crosscurrents of reason and faith, black and white, immigrant and native, industry and agriculture rippling through a narrative that is far from completion.”, —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice, “[Lepore’s] one-volume history is elegant, readable, sobering; it extends a steadying hand when a breakneck news cycle lurches from one event to another, confounding minds and churning stomachs.”, “Jill Lepore is an extraordinarily gifted writer, and These Truths is nothing short of a masterpiece of American history. Personal Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. That's what makes them worth reading about. Mecom was a debtor who had little in common with Jane, and Lepore suggests that their relationship was unaffectionate and mainly functional in nature. Having devoted her last work to Jane Franklin Mecom, Benjamin Franklin’s sister, Lepore clearly has a passion for intelligent, opinionated women whose legacies have been overshadowed by the men they love. Combined with Lepore’s zippy prose, it all makes for a supremely engaging reading experience.” —Etelka Lehoczky, NPR “If it makes your head spin to imagine a skimpily clad pop culture icon as (spoiler alert!) Her achievement in this book puts her in the company of our best contemporary prose stylists. With passion, compassion, wit, and remarkable insight, Lepore brings it all to life, the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. She is also a staff writer at, Lepore is the recipient of many honors, awards, and honorary degrees, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award; the National Magazine Award; and, twice, for the Pulitzer Prize.Â. Understanding America's past, as she demonstrates, has always been a central American project. The historian, whose new book is “If Then,” got a hand-me-down copy of “Little Women” from her mother. Many of these are panels from Marston’s comics that mirror events in his own life. . Washington Times, March 3, 2002, Evan Haefeli, review of A Is for American, p. B7. Lepore is a historian with wide popular appeal, and this comprehensive work will answer readers’ questions about who we are as a nation.”, “In this time of disillusionment with American politics, Jill Lepore’s beautifully written book should be essential reading for everyone who cares about the country’s future. Only Jill Lepore has the verve, wit, range, and insights to pull off this daring and provocative book. Encyclopedia.com. Harvard University | History Department | Cambridge, MA 02138, Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and Affiliate Professor of Law at Harvard University. [Lepore]seamlessly shifts from the micro to the macro….A panel depicting this labor unrest is just one of scores that appear throughout Lepore's book, further amplifying the author's vivid prose.”—Newsday “A Harvard professor with impeccable scholarly credentials, Lepore treats her subject seriously, as if she is writing the biography of a feminist pioneer like Margaret Sanger, the founder of the birth control movement — which this book is, to an extent….Through extensive research and a careful reading of the Wonder Woman comic books, she argues convincingly that the story of this character is an indelible chapter in the history of women’s rights.” —Miami HeraldÂ, A Finalist for the 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Born 1960, in Nyack, NY; son of a teacher and an artist; married June, 2002; wife's name, Audrey. Retrieved January 13, 2021 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/lepore-jill-1966. Think again. In another fast-paced narrative, Jill Lepore brilliantly uncovers the history of the Simulmatics Corp, which launched the volatile mix of computing, politics and personal behavior that now divides our nation, feeds on private information, and weakens the strength our democratic institutions. The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge--decades before Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica. Born February 1, 1941, in Norristown, PA; son of Louis A. ", "This vivid history brings alive the contradictions and hypocrisies of the land of the free", "A history for the 21st century, far more inclusive than the standard histories of the past", "Monumental ... a crucial work for presenting a fresh and clear-sighted narrative of the entire story ... exciting and page-turningly fascinating, in one of those rare history books that can be read with pleasure for its sheer narrative energy", "Jill Lepore is that rare combination in modern life of intellect, originality and style", A New York Times and National Bestseller and Winner of the 2015 American History Book Prize, "Ms. Lepore’s lively, surprising and occasionally salacious history is far more than the story of a comic strip. Her most recent book, “Book of Ages: the Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin,” was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award for non-fiction and Lepore […] “A person can't help but feel inspired by the riveting intelligence and joyful curiosity of Jill Lepore.  Knowing that there is a mind like hers in the world is a hope-inducing thing.”, “Everything Lepore writes is distinguished by intelligence, eloquence, and fresh insight. If Then is that, and even more: It’s absolutely fascinating, excavating a piece of little-known American corporate history that reveals a huge amount about the way we live today and the companies that define the modern era.”, “Data science, Jill Lepore reminds us in this brilliant book, has a past, and she tells it through the engrossing story of Simulmatics, the tiny, long-forgotten company that helped invent our data-obsessed world, in which prediction is seemingly the only knowledge that matters. Lepore calls it an “experimental life.” What shaped Marston’s experiments most were the women with whom he lived, loved, and lied. If you want to know where this all started, you need not look any further--read this book!”, — Julian Zelizer, author of Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker and the Rise of the New Republican PartyÂ. In the nexus of feminism and popular culture, Jill Lepore has found a revelatory chapter of American history. I will never look at Wonder Woman’s bracelets the same way again.” —Alison Bechdel, author of Fun HomeÂ, “Lepore has an astonishing story and tells it extremely well. She was a passionate reader, a gifted writer and a shrewd observer of politics. Lepore is a past president of the Society of American Historians and a former Commissioner of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. Only Jill Lepore has the verve, wit, range, and insights to pull off this daring and provocative book. Jill Lepore had written my book. Three of her books derive from her New Yorker essays: The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death (Knopf, 2012), a finalist for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction; The Story of America: Essays on Origins (Princeton, 2012), shortlisted for the PEN Literary Award for the Art of the Essay; and The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle for American History (Princeton, 2010), a Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Her 2019 book This America: The Case for the Nation, is based on an essay written for Foreign Affairs.Â. A complete list of Lepore's New Yorker essays is here. 13 Jan. 2021 . Early American Literature, winter, 2003, Patricia Crain, review of A Is for American, p. 157. She’s particularly skillful at showing the subtle process by which personal details migrate from life into art.” —Christian Science Monitor  “Wonder Woman, everyone's favorite female superhero (bulletproof bracelets, hello! ADDRESSES: Office—History Department, Boston University, 226 Bay State Rd., Boston, MA 02215. Historian Jill Lepore on the life of Jane Franklin, Ben Franklin's beloved sister. Jill Lepore's These Truths (Norton, $39.95) thrives on connecting such precedents to the present. PERSONAL: By engaging with our country's painful past (and present) in an intellectually honest way, she has created a book that truly does encapsulate the American story in all its pain and all its triumph.”, “A splendid rendering—filled with triumph, tragedy, and hope—that will please Lepore’s readers immensely and win her many new ones.”, “This thought-provoking and fascinating book stands to become the definitive one-volume U.S. history for a new generation.”, “An ambitious and provocative attempt to interpret American history as an effort to fulfill and maintain certain fundamental principles. She has been a consultant and contributor to a number of documentary and public history projects. Her three-part story, "The Search for Big Brown," was broadcast on The New Yorker Radio Hour in 2015. In riveting prose, These Truths tells the story of America, beginning in 1492, to ask whether the course of events has proven the nation’s founding truths, or belied them. Silicon Valley likes to imagine it has no past but the scientists of Simulmatics are the long-dead grandfathers of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. © 2019 Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. Each chapter is carefully shaped. . However, the date of retrieval is often important. Coeditor of Commonplace, an online history magazine. 10 records for Jill Lepore. Her essays and reviews have also appeared in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Journal of American History, Foreign Affairs, the Yale Law Journal, American Scholar, and the American Quarterly; have been translated into German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Latvian, Swedish, French, Chinese, and Japanese; and have been widely anthologized, including in collections of the best legal writing and the best technology writing. In riveting prose. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Photo by Mark Ostrow. Education:…, AGEE, Jon 1960- Borrowing from psychological warfare, they used computers to predict and direct human behavior, deploying their “People Machine” from New York, Cambridge, and Saigon for clients that included John Kennedy’s presidential campaign, theÂ, “Everything Lepore writes is distinguished by intelligence, eloquence, and fresh insight.Â, “Think today’s tech giants invented data mining and market manipulation? Jill Lepore and Jane Franklin; Jill Lepore and Her Mother. window.__mirage2 = {petok:"a76ebe4d573320e3e0ec87ea0b609b2151aa7a65-1613298698-86400"}; Think again. Personal Lepore has been contributing to The New Yorker since 2005, writing about American history, law, literature, and politics. We learn about Benjamin Franklin—the very epitome of an American—from kindergarten onward. Her 2018 book, These Truths: A History of the United States, was a New York Times bestseller, and is also being published around the world, translated into languages that include German, Chinese, Polish, and Romanian. Born February 28, 1948, in Miami, FL; daughter of Vincent Robert and Helen Gloria Napoli; marr…, PERSONAL: The massacre, however, eradicated any hope of Native American hegemony or independence. Jane married at 15, bore … At a time when few are disposed to see history as a branch of literature, Lepore occupies a prominent place in American letters. ... From 2009: Jill Lepore writes about the history of American Presidents’ Inaugural Addresses, from George Washington to Barack Obama. AWARDS, HONORS: Named "Young Americanist," Harvard University, 1998; research grant from American Philosophical Society, 1998; winner of the Bancroft and Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes.