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
branch century history late modern science
Modern political science started in the late nineteenth century as a branch of history.
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.
break crack difficult history stir
Democracy is difficult and demanding. So is history. It can crack your voice; it can stir your soul; it can break your heart.
history people single
No nation has a single history, no people a single song.
broke good history matched means rich
Americans like to get rich fast. That this means we go broke fast, too, is something that we have become very good at forgetting. Our ignorance of history is matched only by our unfailing optimism; it's actually part of our optimism.
eaten history saved written
History's written from what can be found; what isn't saved is lost, sunken and rotted, eaten by earth.
history trial
Clarence Darrow, America's best-known trial lawyer, was also one of American history's most skilled orators.
dominated history human notion view war west
The idea of progress - the notion that human history is the history of human betterment - dominated the world view of the West between the Enlightenment and the First World War.
date fiction modern plots press science stories
The stories about epidemics that are told in the American press - their plots and tropes - date to the nineteen-twenties, when modern research science, science journalism, and science fiction were born.
ad campaign children footage homework includes kitchen produced targeted women
The very first television ad targeted to women was produced by the Eisenhower-Nixon campaign in 1956. It includes footage of a woman supervising her children doing their homework at the kitchen table.
born children die dozen family growing help home left life ordinary rear soon youngest
An ordinary life used to look something like this: born into a growing family, you help rear your siblings, have the first of your own half-dozen or even dozen children soon after you're grown, and die before your youngest has left home.
presidents
Few American presidents have been unhappier or lonelier in office than Woodrow Wilson.
biography nature
Presidential biography is, by its nature, out of scale; no character is bigger, no action greater, than the person and the doings of the American president.
debtors good numbers
We have discharged one generation of debtors after another, but we do not find that their numbers lessen. We find only that we forget, when times are good, that times were ever bad.