Quotes from Jill Lepore

In 1787, then, when Alexander Hamilton asked "whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force," that was the kind of question a scientist asks before beginning an experiment.

Vietnamese men, women, and children were dying, starving, being shot, bombed, burned, and napalmed. American soldiers were being shipped home in boxes, coffins, and bags. And the U.S. government was paying an Upper West Side Freudian analyst to explain that the Vietnamese, as a people, had Oedipal issues.

DURING THE WAR, nearly one in five slaves in the United States left their homes, fleeing American slavery in search of British liberty.

If the United States were to acquire territory from Mexico, and if this territory were to enter the Union, would Mexicans become American citizens? Calhoun, now in the Senate, vehemently opposed this idea. "I protest against the incorporation of such a people," he declared. "Ours is the government of the white man.

She was curious, and she could be untoward. But she was dutiful. She was pared to fit.

If the favored modes of the alt-right were the women-hating troll and the neo-Nazi meme, the favored modes of the alt-left were clickbait and the call-out, sentimental, meaningless outrage—"8 Signs Your Yoga Practice Is Culturally Appropriated"—and sanctimonious accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Two years later, the New York Times and CBS released a joint poll—the first media-made poll. Critics pointed out that, ethically, the press, which is supposed to report news, can't also produce it, but media-run polls exploded all the same.62

Between 1978 and 1984, pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans were purged from their parties.

was doomed to fall short, because of the gap between facts and truth.

that people so often believe themselves to be right is no proof that they are.

A girl's apprenticeship was girlhood itself. A

Whoever wrote it, "Wonder Women of History" was entirely consistent with Marston's hope, in creating Wonder Woman, "to combat the idea that women are inferior to men, and to inspire girls to self-confidence and achievement in athletics, occupations and professions monopolized by men.

Friedman published a book aimed at a general audience, Capitalism and Freedom, in which he argued that personal freedom can only be assured by the free market system.

I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best."18

The Constitution threatens to be a subject of infinite sects, like the Bible." And, as with many sects, those politicians who most strenuously staked their arguments on the Constitution often appeared the least acquainted with it.

Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people," James Madison warned in 1787.

While two and a half million Europeans had migrated to all of the Americas between 1500 and 1800, the same number - two and a half million - arrived specifically in the United States between 1845 and 1854 alone.

Simulmatics died. The fantasy of predicting human behavior by way of machines did not. Instead, it took new forms, forms that depended on forgetting that Simulmatics had ever existed.

Replacing "progress" with "innovation" skirts the question of whether a novelty is an improvement: the world may not be getting better and better but our devices are getting newer and newer.

I think of a man in the voting booth who hesitates between two levers as if he were pausing between competing tubes of toothpaste in a drugstore," Reeves explained. "The brand that has made the highest penetration on his brain will win his choice.

established under Magna Carta was the right to a trial by jury. For centuries, guilt or innocence had been determined, across Europe, either by a trial by ordeal—a trial by water, for instance, or a trial by fire—or by trial by combat. Trials by ordeal and

A ROBOT COMPUTER WILL GIVE CBS THE FASTEST REPORTING IN HISTORY," read the headline.31 The UNIVAC would stay in Philadelphia—it was too big to move—but in New York, CBS would install a fake, a console lit, from the inside, by a string of Christmas lights. The first computer most Americans ever saw was an empty shell: a stunt.

Welles later insisted that his point, all along, had been to raise Americans' awareness about the perils of radio in an age of propaganda. "People suspect what they read in the newspaper," he said, but "when radio came . . . anything that came through that new machine was believed.

You know something, Stu?' Reagan said to Stuart Spencer. 'Politics is just like show business... You begin with a hell of an opening, you coast for a while, & you end with a hell of a closing.