'This America' Pits Rise In Nationalism Against Championing Of Liberal Democracy
Jill Lepore, author of These Truths, argues that supporters of free and fair liberal government can't just hold their noses and wait for voters to realize that democracy is better than autocracy.
"Nations, to make sense of themselves, need some kind of agreed-upon past," Jill Lepore writes in her latest book, This America: The Case for the Nation. "They can get it from scholars or they can get it from demagogues."
We know Lepore thinks America's national history is worth studying and writing. Just last year, she published an epic, 900-plus page single-volume history at the time as "magnificent." The aim of this much, much more slender book — she calls it "a long essay, really" — is much less clear.
