Historians can be wary of writing about the present. But sometimes, the present has other ideas. On Election Day 2016, Jill Lepore was deep into working on “These Truths,” her sprawling new history of the United States (in the middle of her chapter about the Civil War, as it happens). “It seemed like a good landing, not in a partisan way, but as a matter of American history. To not adjust to end there just seemed wrong, like a dereliction of duty as a historian.”“These Truths,” published by W. W. Norton on Sept. 18, and weighing in at a whopping 932 pages, could not be better timed, or titled, as reviewers have noted.

Source: New York Times September 16, 2018 14:00 UTC