These Truths: A History of the United States

In These Truths, Jill Lepore provides a sweeping narrative of the history of the United States. A book comprised not only of mere facts; it is an archive of the stories, ideas, and individuals that drove a nation: those that bound and broke the people. In the end, we must not romanticize our history; we must face the truth, however unpleasant.

History has been inspired, I believe, by a pursuit of truth, evidenced through examples such as pollsters and the Simulatics. But, in the end, who does know the truth? We all search for truth , but we will never know when we find it, because we don’t know what it looks like in the first place.

One key theme that ripples throughout history is promises, albeit, many broken ones.

*Liberal columnist E. J. Dionne detected a pattern: candidates and parties made big promises, and when they gained power and failed to make good on those promises, they blamed some kind of conspiracy—any sort of conspiracy. (761) * Simple promises such as “all men are created equal” have divided a nation. The founding fathers claimed to recognize this as a “self-evident truth”. But had they forgotten about the Native Americans, intruded upon by unrightful settlers? What of the Africans, forced from home and deemed as an inferior? What about the women? How could they say equal when there really was inequality? The Founding Fathers did not promise equality; to them, it was just an ideal.

But a nation cannot choose its past; it can only choose its future. (788) People were divided over the issue of slavery, even before America had become a nation. The Constitution, instead of confronting this issue, tried to ignore this part of history. This single act of ignorance would polarize the country. A civil war was fought over it, the country divided among its own people. Even today, we cannot escape its effects. They also left women out of the Constitution, to a similar effect. Ignorance, in the end, is not bliss; it is only delaying what could have been done until that point at which action forces itself to be made. The past is their for us to learn from, the future is there for us to improve upon.

I enjoyed the way in which Jill Lepore presents this book. It details every event with disinterested criticism, focusing on the hard facts with relentless authenticity. She uncovers the real events, the underlying ideas, and the perspectives of all sides. This book lives up to its name: it tries to stay as close to the truth as possible.