During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama declared that the story of American history is of countless people striving toward ‘a more perfect union’, that most utopian of goals enshrined in the nation’s Constitution. In These Truths, a one-volume account of the entirety of American history since European settlement, Jill Lepore praises Obama’s unifying rhetoric, but believes the tide of American history is against him.
Ben Vine reviews 'These Truths: A History of the United States' by Jill Lepore
Ben Vine
Published in January-February 2019, no. 408
These Truths: A History of the United States
by Jill Lepore
W.W. Norton & Company, $62.95 hb, 953 pp, 9780393635249
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Ben Vine
Ben Vine is a Sydney-based historian. He recently completed a PhD in the Department of History at the University of Sydney, where he teachers American history. He has written on early America, American social history, and veterans of the American Revolutionary War who were among the first European settlers of Australia.
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January-February 2019, no. 408
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