Our country started with promise and promises. Not all of those promises of equality, sovereignty, and consent, were achieved or were even achievable.
In our core book, the Harvard historian Jill Lepore, in one volume, encapsulates the history of this country from the 1600s through 2018. It articulates the confusion of facts and fiction that have always been with us, as well as the deep and contradictory currents of our society continually swirling. It is not just another history book, although it is a pleasure to read, and seems painfully honest and without excessive political bias, although some reviewers have expressed concern. Based on recent history it seems conservative in its prognostications post 1916 and omissions not material to the underlying theme. It was the basis for a successful SD/G in Winter of 2020.
The question which it raises is if America has, and ever could have lived up to its stated ideals or whether a nation conceived in revolution must always be chaotic, questioning whether the simplistic view of democracy ever worked. It leads us through U.S. history from Columbus up to and through the 2016 election. Its answer is in many ways disturbing, as it shines a light on the American experiment. She says:
“The American experiment has not ended A nation born in revolution will forever struggle against chaos. A nation founded on universal rights will wrestle against the forces of particularism. A nation that toppled hierarchy of birth only to erect a hierarchy of wealth will never know tranquility. A nation of immigrants cannot close its borders. And a nation born in contradiction, liberty in a land of slavery, sovereignty in a land of conquest, will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history.”
The story told contains much information that is new and fresh, and insights which need to be considered, even if rejected. Almost every page, while introducing us to new historical figures and clarifying others, is readily applicable to our present political, social and foreign policy situation. Its focus is pointing out the counterbalancing ideas and movements during this period, highlighting people and events including some that we either do not learn about or fail to understand in context.
It’s a big sweeping book. It covers the history of political thought, the fabric of American social life over the centuries, classic “great man” accounts of contingencies, surprises, decisions, ironies and character, and the vivid experiences of those previously marginalized: women, African-Americans, Native Americans, homosexuals. It encompasses interesting takes on democracy and technology, shifts in demographics, revolutions in economics and the very nature of modernity.
It includes the relationship of the races from the early days, the impact on the secular polity of religious revivals, the ongoing and pernicious response of the South to the Civil War and thereafter, , the role of media, including the sometimes interchangeable connection of polling and advertising to political discourse, the important role of women and how moral issues were the key to their admission into politics and the franchise, our history of authoritarianism and attention to important and interesting people that appear in other histories only in footnotes.
This is a great and fresh way of viewing the entire panorama of our history from well before the 18th century through 2016 and its aftermath in one well written and thoughtful volume.
Jefferson said that the American experiment rests on three “self-evident” truths: political equality, natural rights and the sovereignty of the people. Her question is the extent to which the United states has lived up to its ideals. In history, many had the idea that in America, there existed the Lockean “state of nature,” a place for new beginnings. They weren’t looking hard enough at its past.
