Good morning, and happy Fourth of July!
There’s no better occasion than the United States’ 250th birthday to return to one of my favorite reads: a 2019 essay by Jill Lepore on the centuries-long struggle over how to tell this country’s story. Declaring independence in 1776 was what made the United States a state, she wrote. But it would take more than that to become a nation, “a people with common origins.” Building a national identity—a shared understanding of what it means to be an American—has been done through the writing of history.
Yet American historians have neglected that task in recent decades, Lepore argued. And in their place, “charlatans, stooges, and tyrants” have managed to spread “myths and prophecies, prejudices and hatreds.” The United States “will forever fight over the meaning of its history,” she wrote. But this is a fight no one “can afford to sit out.”
Until next week, |
