This America, Jill Lepore
This America, Jill Lepore
List: $10.00 | Sale: $7.00
Club: $5.00

This America
The Case for the Nation

Author: Jill Lepore

Narrator: Jill Lepore

Unabridged: 2 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/28/2019


Synopsis

From the best-selling author of These Truths, a work that examines the dilemma of nationalism and the erosion of liberalism in the twenty-first century.

At a time of much despair over the future of liberal democracy, Harvard historian Jill Lepore makes a stirring case for the nation in This America. Since the end of the Cold War, Lepore writes, American historians have largely retreated from the idea of "the nation," in part because postmodernism has corroded faith in grand narratives, and in part because the rise of political nationalism has rendered it suspect and unpalatable. Bucking this trend, however, Lepore argues forcefully that the nation demands scrutiny. Without an honest reckoning with America's collective past, we will be at the mercy of unscrupulous demagogues who spin their own version of the national story for their own purposes. "When serious historians abandon the study of the nation," Lepore tellingly writes, "nationalism doesn't die. Instead, it eats liberalism." A trenchant work of political philosophy as well as a reclamation of America's national history, This America asks us to look our nation's sovereign past square in the eye to reveal not only a history of contradictions, but a path of promise for the future.

© 2019 Estate of Arcola Pettway / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

About The Author

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and professor of law at Harvard Law School. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her many books include the international bestseller These Truths: A History of the United States. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Marks54 on June 16, 2019

Jill Lepore has written a new book arguing for an American “nationalism”. The book is short and more like an extended essay than a full book. That is OK. “This America” is an excellent book and a quick and enjoyable read. The book examines two senses of nationalism. One an exclusive nationalism, base......more

Goodreads review by robin on June 26, 2023

Jill Lepore's Case For The Nation The renowned historian Jill Lepore's 2018 book "These Truths" was the first single volume history in decades of the United States from Christopher Columbus' voyage in 1492 to the election to the presidency of Donald Trump in 2016. Lepore has followed-up her history w......more

Goodreads review by CoachJim on January 20, 2021

At a campaign rally in the fall of 2018 Donald Trump said “You know what a globalist is, right? A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much. And you know what? We can’t have that. You know, they have a word, it sort of became old-fashioned......more

Goodreads review by Ryan on May 31, 2019

In 2018, Jill Lepore wrote what I would consider to be the best single-volume history of the United States, titled These Truths. The theme was clear, that the US, despite its messy history, was founded on admirable principles that it has slowly and arduously fought to live up to—and continues to do......more

Goodreads review by Colleen on August 25, 2023

This short book was originally an essay that Lepore was encouraged to turn into a book. It may be a small book but it contains within its pages a great deal of thought and information. Pointing to historians collective decision in the latter half of the Twentieth Century to refrain from writing nati......more


Quotes

Ambitious.... a thoughtful and passionate defense of her vision of American patriotism.... [Lepore] dedicates her book to her father, 'whose immigrant parents named him Amerigo in 1924, the year Congress passed a law banning immigrants like them.
—Michael Lind, New York Times

A sharp, short history of nationalism.... A frank, well-written look at the dangers we face. We ignore them at our peril.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Urgent and pithy… Readers seeking clear and relevant definitions of political concepts will appreciate this brisk yet thorough, frank, and bracing look at the ancient origins of the nation state versus the late-eighteenth-century coinage of the term ‘nationalism’ and its alignment with exclusion and prejudice.
—Booklist

A hopeful book for all who believe that America's ideals are stronger than our demagogues.
—Michael Bloomberg