There are two terms worth spelling out here. This America's contribution to this booming genre: an argument that the advocates for liberal democracy ceded the field of studying and interpreting American history to nationalists - and, by doing so, inadvertently gave fuel to a fire they thought was completely extinguished. This is an idea well-documented in recent books, and rightly so, as a global populist and autocratic wave shows no signs of weakening. Lepore's main point is that while champions of liberal democracy were celebrating the dawn of a cosmopolitan, interconnected, multi-cultural global community, an ugly, xenophobic nationalism was quietly taking root and reemerging as a powerful political force. Just last year, she published an epic, 900-plus page single-volume history of the United States, which NPR reviewed at the time as 'magnificent.' The aim of this much, much more slender book - she calls it 'a long essay, really' - is much less clear. We know Lepore thinks America's national history is worth studying and writing.

'They can get it from scholars or they can get it from demagogues.' 'Nations, to make sense of themselves, need some kind of agreed-upon past,' Jill Lepore writes in her latest book, This America: The Case for the Nation. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title This America Subtitle The Case for the Nation Author Jill Lepore

Jill lepore this america