I have written a lot of books, but I’ve never had an experience anything like the experience I have had since These Truths was published last fall. His email reminded me why I wrote this book. “I frankly felt too disoriented to learn a new country’s story.” He’d written to thank me: These Truths had helped him find his bearings. “It’s a little embarrassing to admit but I did not have any sort of framework for understanding U.S. For most of his life, he explained, he’d been uninterested in American history, hostile to it, even, out of a feeling of not belonging. He’d come to the United States from Costa Rica at the age of ten, an undocumented immigrant. citizenship exam and he’d decided to read my book, These Truths: A History of The United States, to help him prepare. The day I sat down to write this essay I got an email from a man in South Carolina. Jill Lepore’s response was originally published on May 9 2019. We heard from David Hollinger about the role of knowledge and truth in John Dewey’s Progressive vision Malinda Maynor Lowery discussed the importance of Native American histories to understanding an American “national history ” and Claire Bond Potter addressed the nature of grand historical visions. Three historians have responded to Jill Lepore’s These Truths: A History of the United States (New York: W.W.
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