These Truths

Just finished listening to Jill Lepore's These Truths in the car. A book of tremendous importance, her command of American history from John Winthrop to Alex Jones is pretty impressive and she is a tremendous writer and, perhaps most important, an honest and honorable person who is aware of her own limitations and those of the people naturally inclined to ally with her. The recording was enhanced by the fact that she took time to do the reading herself, which is something many authors don't do, but it lets them place emphasis where it feels right.

The most important thing to take away from this book is that -- far from unprecedented, Trump and the populism he embodies is all too precedented in American history, and in people we don't think of as natural precedents. Democrats don't come off uncriticized, as indeed we shouldn't, though it's pretty clear whose side she comes down on.

She is undoubtedly stronger on some subjects than on others. Her treatment of the evolution of judicial originalism is particularly strong, as is her portrait of the arc and influence of Phyllis Schlafly. In general, I'm not sufficiently versed in American history to criticize much of this book, though if I knew of a place where a reputable and intelligent conservative had published a reasonable length review of the book, I might try to read it.

One thing I will say is that, Lepore's book -- like Stephen Pinker's Enlightenment Now, Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, or even Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads -- seeks to bite off a very large chunk of world history, digest it, and present it back to the reader. All of these are great books, each of them worthwhile, from brilliant folks. And yet I wonder if there isn't something odd about this totalizing instinct in contemporary authors, this instinct, nay this need to explain everything, if there is not a bit of hubris to it, or is it just born of an ambient anxiety particular to the present moment, a sense of history getting out of hand. That said, I really need to buy physical copies of each of these books that I've listened to in the car and have them on my shelf for reference purposes. Great books all, from great minds.