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
history people single
No nation has a single history, no people a single song.
people types
Some people will always think they know how to make other people's marriages better, and, after a while, they'll get to cudgeling you or selling you something; the really entrepreneurial types will sell you the cudgel.
among people
Americans, among the marryingest people in the world, are also the divorcingest.
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.
assumed assumption children historians mortality people proved since
Historians once assumed that when childhood mortality was high, people must not have loved their children very much; it would have been too painful. Research has since proved that assumption wrong.
aged basement canvas dozen found jane miles nine portrait public
Not long before my mother died, I found a long-lost portrait of Jane Franklin's granddaughter, Jane Flagg, aged nine - oil on canvas - in the basement of a public library not a dozen miles from my mother's house.
bridges business common doctors domestic general homes insure laid nursing pay promote property protect provide roads schools taxes
Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine.
civilized pay society wealthy
Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more because they have benefitted more.
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.
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.
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.
dates eighteenth essays magazines printed printing reviewing time
Book reviewing dates only to the eighteenth century, when, for the first time, there were so many books being printed that magazines - they were new, too - started printing essays about them.
age disruptive seized
Disruptive innovation is competitive strategy for an age seized by terror.