The Story of America: Essays on Origins is a book written by Jill Lepore and published quite recently in 2012. Lepore is an American writer and historian who focuses on American history, politics, and literature, and writes for The New Yorker. She has even been honored as the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University. Not only does she write books, many of which have won awards, and articles for The New Yorker, but her essays and reviews are also highly acclaimed and have appeared in high profile journals all over the US. Lepore, in her current position at Harvard University, where she teaches American history focused with a lens on politics, seeks missing evidence that allows for historians and scholars to link different processes and analyze many political movements.
In this book, The Story of America: Essays on Origins takes the reader all the way back to 1607, to the original founding of Jamestown based on John Smith’s records. Working her way to present day American politics, Lepore brings the reader up to Barack Obama’s monumental inaugural address in 2009. However, Lepore’s book does not solely trace the movement of politics throughout America’s history; she links the importance of print to the changes in American democracy. As she traces the evolution of American democracy and politics over the centuries, Lepore presents a new perspective on how we receive and interpret America’s own origin story in The Story of America: Essays on Origins.
