Summary of The Deadline essays by Jill Lepore

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Summary of The Deadline essays by Jill Lepore

 

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Jill Lepore, a renowned historian and writer, has contributed significantly to public discourse with her insightful essays in The Deadline. Lepore's work explores topics such as lockdowns, race commissions, and the loss of life, highlighting the nation's techno-utopianism, frantic fractiousness, and unprecedented aimlessness. The Deadline challenges the nature of the essay and history by striking a balance between political and personal aspects, showcasing Lepore's exceptional skills and insights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9783755451648

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Summary of

The Deadline

A

Summary of Jill Lepore’s Essays

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Summary of The Deadline: Essays by Jill Lepore

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This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Jill Lepore’s The Deadline: Essays designed to enrich your reading experience.

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Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.

Introduction

The author, who never set out to study history, has been struggling with the conventions of the discipline of history. They have tried to write history differently, but the buttoned-up conventions of the discipline bugged them. They started with a dissertation about the eighteenth-century culture of seduction, but later decided to write a dissertation about a seventeenth-century war. When they got a job as an assistant professor, they learned that it was crucial to hide their children. After getting tenure, they started to wobble on that commitment, but they were also planning to quit and stay home.

In 2009, the author wrote a five-thousand-word essay called Baby Food about the history of breastfeeding, which led to readers outing themselves as a human being. In 2011, she described Benjamin Franklin's remarks at the Constitutional Convention in an essay about the U.S. Constitution. The domestic metaphors and maternal asides became a compulsion, the unmasking of myself as a person who spends most of her time cooking, quilting, nursing, gardening, shoveling snow, and doing laundry. After her parents died, in 2012, she wrote an essay called Prodigal Daughter, and in 2019, on the twentieth anniversary of a death that shattered her life, she wrote The Deadline, the title essay of her book. The author's struggle with the conventions of history and her own experiences with writing has shaped her writing style and perspective on the subject.

This collection of essays, organized into ten parts, explores the relationship between the American past and its violent present. The essays focus on the hold of the dead over the living, the tug of time, and the relationship between the past and the present. The essays explore topics such as polarization, disruptive innovation, torture, impeachment, race-riot commissions, and the impact of technology, culture, and constitutional rule. The collection is influenced by the author's own life and the experiences of life under COVID. The essays were written during a period of tragic decline in the United States, marked by rising political violence, culture war, constitutional crises, climate change, and a global pandemic.

The author used scholarship and archival evidence to provide insights into the present and the past. The collection was written during a time when the author was writing and revising a sweeping history of the United States, These Truths.

A dead line was once an invisible fence around a prison, but it became a time by which one had to finish something or lose their job in the early twentieth century. The author enjoys writing on deadlines, but they are also haunted by the river of time that divides the quick from the dead and the remains left behind. The author's writings from these places reflect a red thread, a worry about rule, power distribution, and the justness of a written constitution. In 1798, American writer Charles Brockden Brown published a story about a learned lady who was a Federalist and advocate of the Constitution. She argued that women were excluded from political rights without the least ceremony and that law-makers thought they were pigs or sheep.

The author, who was a feminist, refused to accept a constitution that failed to count her as a human being. The author's writings reflect the ongoing struggle for women's rights and the importance of understanding the complexities of society.

Part One

Prodigal Daughter

PRODIGAL DAUGHTER

The author describes her mother's life as a devout Catholic who lived in a small town in Massachusetts. She was a talented artist who painted every cabinet, stitched quilts, and built dollhouses out of shoeboxes. She was married to her father, a junior high school principal, and they had a strong bond.

The author's mother was born in 1706 in Boston, and her sister Jane was born in 1712. They had a close bond, with their childhood being characterized by harmony and harmony. Benjamin Franklin, born in 1706 in Boston, was the youngest of his father's ten sons. His sister Jane was born in 1712, and they were the youngest of their father's seven daughters.

The author's mother never heard of Jane Franklin when she lived on Franklin Street. She was introduced to her name on a library floor, and she was everywhere in her life. They were both very similar, with their lives being different. Boys were taught to read and write, girls to read and stitch, and three in five women in New England couldn't even sign their names. Writing was an art, and Benjamin Franklin taught his sister how to write with wit, force, and style.

The author's mother's love for Benjamin Franklin and her sister Jane were deeply ingrained in their lives, and their bond was a testament to the power of love and the power of family.

In 1723, Benjamin Franklin ran away from his life in Boston, leaving his wife Jane Franklin to raise her children. Jane Franklin became a printer, philosopher, statesman, and wife, and she signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, and the Constitution. She wrote the story of her life, which was an allegory about America. Jane Franklin never wrote the story of her life, but she did stitch four sheets of foolscap between two covers to make a little book of sixteen pages. The book of Ages was written in a lavish, calligraphic letter B, a graceful, slender, and artful A. She learned this lettering from a writing manual like The American Instructor: Or, Young Man’s Best Companion.

Jane Franklin never ran away and never wrote the story of her life. She did once stitch four sheets of foolscap between two covers to make a little book of sixteen pages. The book of Ages lists her birthdate, her marriage, and her death. The book of Ages is a testament to the importance of preserving the lives of those who have passed away.

Remains of a life include unpublished papers, descendants, and unpublished papers. The Boston Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet wrote about her children as my little babes, my dear remains, but her words were all that her children would have left of her. Jane's words were all that her children would, one day, have left of her.

In the 1980s, the author took a job as a secretary to pursue her passion for writing. She was sick of silence, attics, and wallpaper, and wanted to study war, investigate atrocity, and write about politics. However, her mother pressed her to write about Jane Franklin, who she admired for her humor, generosity, and fortune.

The author's mother and father became tangled up, and the author admired Jane Franklin. Jane had a daughter named Abiah Franklin, and her husband, Josiah Franklin, died in 1744. She gave her portion of the estate to her, and her mother wrote a letter to her son, Benjamin Franklin, expressing her grief and blessings.

Jane's baby, Abiah Mecom, died within the year, and her mother died in 1752. Benjamin Franklin paid for a gravestone and wrote an epitaph, stating that he and his wife, Abiah Franklin, lived happily together in Wisconsin for fifty-five years.

The author's mother's heart began to fail, and she had a heart attack, surgery, and a defibrillator implanted in her chest. The author's mother would visit her in the hospital, but she would send her away. The author's life plan was narrow and hackneyed, and she longed to study war, investigate atrocities, and write about politics.

In 1758, Jane Mecom wrote a letter to Franklin's wife, Deborah, expressing her frustration with her writing and the lack of proper expression. She was in a great wash, with her lodgers Sarah and Edward sick. Jane had heard rumors about Benjamin Franklin's baronetcy and was told to send her congratulations soon. She wanted to be carried away, out of her house and into the world. She loved gossip and wanted to know more about her husband and children, as her mother used to write her.

Jane was not a letter writer, and her brother warned her that she was too free with him. She confessed that she was too dictatorial and that she was always too proud of her writing. He teased her for being too dictatorial, claiming that she wrote better than most American women.

The difficulty of her writing and her lack of formality made it difficult for her brother to understand what she meant. She worried that her brother would not understand what she meant, and she hoped to find out what she meant. However, the difficulty of her writing made it difficult for her brother to understand what she meant.

In the 1760s, Jane's family was sick, and her daughter Sally died. She took in Sally's four young children, followed by her husband and her favorite daughter. She wrote in her Book of Ages, The Lord Giveth & the Lord taketh away, and never wrote again.

In 1775, Jane Franklin left home due to her despair and began to question her own life. She sought to read all the political pieces written by her brother, and he sent her a collection of his past writings. She left home in 1775 and lived with her brother in Philadelphia. After the war, she spent the war as a fugitive. When peace came, he returned to Philadelphia and she moved to Boston.

He gave her a house in the North End, and she enjoyed it. She wrote down her opinions, but she couldn't stop writing. In 1786, she asked for her brother's acceptance of the government of the state, fearing it would fatigue her. She asked for his new alphabet and the Petition of the Letter Z. Franklin proposed a new alphabet, which Jane found cunning, especially since she was a writer of old age and couldn't learn. He told her that bad spelling is generally the best, and he told her a story about a gentleman who receives a note stating that he delivered his wife's message to his wife. Jane loved this story and thought Sir & Madam were deficient in sagacity, but sometimes the Betys had the brightest understanding.

Jane, a Welsh clergyman and political radical, read Richard Price's Four Dissertations at the age of seventy-four. She believed that life is fated by Providence, but that suffering is fair and can be protested. Jane wrote a letter to her brother, stating that many people, including Boyles, Clarks, and Newtons, have probably been lost to the world and lived and died in ignorance and meanness. Jane believed that very few people could beat all obstacles and achieve any degree of superiority in understanding.

Benjamin Franklin and his sister knew that very few ever succeeded. Jane died four years later, aged eighty-three. She believed that the most insignificant creature on Earth could be made useful in the scale of beings. She waited too long to write the only book her mother ever wanted her to write. She buried her father and ordered a single gravestone with both their names.

She read her mother's letters and told stories, including a mourning ring and a portrait of Jane's favorite granddaughter, Jenny. After her death, she died unexpectedly and alone at home. She kept her paintbrushes in glass jars in her old bedroom.

The author finished the last revisions, but it was too late for her to read it. She wrote the dedication, Their youngest daughter. In filial regard. Places this stone.

THE DEADLINE

The author describes her experience of sewing her first son's first snowsuit during pregnancy, during the harsh winter months leading up to the end of the world. She sewed the jackets and stuffed bears for him, and the doctor had to unzip the baby out of her. Her best friend, Jane, was on her deathbed, and they were historians. In 2019, twenty years after her birth, the author opened her computer to honor her anniversary. Jane had left a Macintosh PowerBook 160, which she had left to her in her will.

The computer broke, and the author plugged in a power cord to fix it. The screen blinked, and the author discovered that her hard drive had been named Cooper for her dog.

The author began an inquest into her brain, searching for transitions notes on a book by William Bridges called Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes. She found that endings were like little deaths, and they can be entrances to the beginning of a new life. The computer began to bleat, and the author began to question whether she had lost her baby.

The author recalls the pain and cold, the membrane, and the first convulsion of grief. The author doesn't remember the rest of the story. The author's experiences with the snowsuits and her own experiences with transitions and joblessness serve as reminders of the importance of embracing change and the potential for new beginnings.

Jane was a wonderful person who took care of me after my wedding. She stayed with us in a two-story cottage on an island, and we met during our first week of graduate school. She was a brilliant and irresistible person, with a wide range of interests and personalities. She was a big-hearted cynic with spiritual leanings and roving intellect, passionate about books, music, and my New York Times. We discussed politics, elections, war, and other topics, but writing was what she could not do.

When I finished my dissertation, she left graduate school and spent a year at an ashram. She wrote to me after we started emailing, expressing her desire to finish her dissertation, become a writer, and have children. She was the how, the why, the rush, and the fire. Jane never got to do any of the things we both wanted, only I did.

In 1997, Jane, a woman with leukemia, faced a series of treatments and a near-blackout. Her cells and selves divided, and she was diagnosed with leukemia. The author, who was with her through the treatments, was with her through ultrasounds and the baby's first kicks. In 1998, she considered an experimental bone-marrow transplant, but living through it was not the definition of success. When she was sure she could not survive, she decided to refuse to die until her baby came.

This decision brought unbearable pain, and the author's pain was not entirely hers. The year was a near-blackout, but she endured the pain and the pain of her baby. After a bone marrow transplant failed, she left the hospital and moved to live at her friend Denise's house. On April 1, 1999, she couldn't speak in sentences, and the author's contractions began. The hospital sewed her up, and friends took a picture of the baby the minute he came out.

They drove that hundred miles, childbed to deathbed, and showed Jane the photograph. Denise says she knew, she saw, she heard, she smiled, and then she died. The author's grief and the loss of her daughter were deeply ingrained in her life.

Twenty years ago, the author was a writer who had lost her baby and was unable to attend a conference. She felt a sense of guilt for not attending the award ceremony, but she decided to attend Jane's memorial service instead. The feminism of writers who are mothers is forbidden, but the motherhood of scholars is forbidden. She tried attending conferences but was rejected by her fellow scholar, who accused her of being an intellectual manqué. She got pregnant again and continued writing a second book, hoping to get tenure or quit. She adopted two new rules: never read a review and never show your colleagues your soft belly.

She got tenure, but she missed her unfinished dissertation and stitched quilts for her boys. She pushed them around the city in their double stroller, telling them stories about Jane. She also drove the boys to their day care center in snowsuits and blankets, but the car got stuck in ice and snow, causing her to collapse sobbing. She went to California to find a job in a place with no snow, where she was writing a book about slavery. A professor arranged for her to meet him at