Jill Lepore
Jill Lepore
Jill Leporeis an American historian. She is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University. and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she has contributed since 2005. She writes about American history, law, literature, and politics...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
CountryUnited States of America
coverage fox improved iraq war
Fox News's coverage of 9/11 and the war in Iraq improved its ratings, demonstrated its influence, and intensified the controversy over its practices.
critics deeply few gaze paranoid politics
Weirdly, there have been a lot of critics of conservatism, but very few critics of innovation. As a culture, we are deeply paranoid about politics, but we gaze upon innovation with rapturous adulation.
command home liked stay
My mother liked to command me to do things I found scary. I always wanted to stay home and read. My mother only ever wanted me to get away.
endless feels four hours scoring silly sports stop time understand watch
It feels silly to watch endless hours of winter sports every four years, when we never watch them any other time, and we don't even understand the rules, which doesn't stop us from scoring everyone, every run, every skate, every race.
bad good
Well-reported news is a public good; bad news is bad for everyone.
deliver papers screen
When I was a kid, I used to deliver the newspaper all over town, cramming papers between screen doors and into mailboxes and under doormats.
employees moved offices periods throughout
Throughout the nineteen-seventies and eighties, especially during periods of recession, employees were moved from offices to cubicles.
assumed assumption children historians mortality people proved since
Historians once assumed that when childhood mortality was high, people must not have loved their children very much; it would have been too painful. Research has since proved that assumption wrong.
eaten history saved written
History's written from what can be found; what isn't saved is lost, sunken and rotted, eaten by earth.
debtors good numbers
We have discharged one generation of debtors after another, but we do not find that their numbers lessen. We find only that we forget, when times are good, that times were ever bad.
dates eighteenth essays magazines printed printing reviewing time
Book reviewing dates only to the eighteenth century, when, for the first time, there were so many books being printed that magazines - they were new, too - started printing essays about them.
behind divine fall god hand history involve lay loss present ruled special tend theories time
Theories of history used to be supernatural: the divine ruled time; the hand of God, a special providence, lay behind the fall of each sparrow. If the present differed from the past, it was usually worse: supernatural theories of history tend to involve decline, a fall from grace, the loss of God's favor, corruption.
became business companies divided employing people smaller thousands
When business became big business - conglomerates employing hundreds and even thousands of people - companies divided themselves into still smaller units.
since wrote
Since childhood, I wrote a lot of fiction, a lot of stories, but I most loved writing essays.