Jill Lepore
Jill Lepore
Jill Leporeis an American historian. She is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University. and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she has contributed since 2005. She writes about American history, law, literature, and politics...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
CountryUnited States of America
endless feels four hours scoring silly sports stop time understand watch
It feels silly to watch endless hours of winter sports every four years, when we never watch them any other time, and we don't even understand the rules, which doesn't stop us from scoring everyone, every run, every skate, every race.
critics deeply few gaze paranoid politics
Weirdly, there have been a lot of critics of conservatism, but very few critics of innovation. As a culture, we are deeply paranoid about politics, but we gaze upon innovation with rapturous adulation.
bad good
Well-reported news is a public good; bad news is bad for everyone.
coverage fox improved iraq war
Fox News's coverage of 9/11 and the war in Iraq improved its ratings, demonstrated its influence, and intensified the controversy over its practices.
consistent dictated elites following follows likely mass partisan party
Political elites vote in a more partisan fashion than the mass public; this tendency, too, follows a curve. The more you know, the more likely you are to vote in an ideologically consistent way, not just following your party but following a set of constraints dictated by a political ideology.
eighteenth took
One thing that always frustrated me was that, while Benjamin Franklin's was the best-known face of the eighteenth century, no one ever took his sister's likeness.
affairs became bound government mysterious private process programs secrecy secret
Secret government programs that pry into people's private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular.
Secrecy is what is known, but not to everyone. Privacy is what allows us to keep what we know to ourselves.
since wrote
Since childhood, I wrote a lot of fiction, a lot of stories, but I most loved writing essays.
branch century history late modern science
Modern political science started in the late nineteenth century as a branch of history.
My grandmother, who taught me how to cook, didn't know how to read.
behind divine fall god hand history involve lay loss present ruled special tend theories time
Theories of history used to be supernatural: the divine ruled time; the hand of God, a special providence, lay behind the fall of each sparrow. If the present differed from the past, it was usually worse: supernatural theories of history tend to involve decline, a fall from grace, the loss of God's favor, corruption.
became business companies divided employing people smaller thousands
When business became big business - conglomerates employing hundreds and even thousands of people - companies divided themselves into still smaller units.
appearing began computers cords desktop electrical floor
Desktop computers - boxes inside boxes - began appearing in those cubicles in the mid-eighties, electrical cords curling on the floor like so many ropes.