{"title":"Jill Lepore","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"if-then-how-the-simulmatics-corporation-invented-the-future","title":"If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future","description":"The Simulmatics Corporation, founded in 1959, mined data, targeted voters, accelerated news, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge--decades before Facebook, Amazon, and Cambridge Analytica. Although Silicon Valley likes to imagine that it has no past, the scientists of Simulmatics are almost undoubtedly the long-dead ancestors of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk--or so argues Jill Lepore, distinguished Harvard historian and \u003cem\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e staff writer, in this \"hilarious, scathing, and sobering\" (David Runciman) account of the origins of predictive analytics and behavioral data science.","brand":"W. W. Norton \u0026 Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51304797765917,"sku":"9781324091127","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0988\/1259\/2413\/files\/imageloader_385e0d2b-8d5f-4dca-ab68-181b2eae618b.jpg?v=1779125730"},{"product_id":"these-truths-a-history-of-the-united-states","title":"These Truths: A History of the United States","description":"\u003cp\u003eWidely hailed for its \"sweeping, sobering account of the American past\" (\u003cem\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/em\u003e), Jill Lepore's one-volume history of America places truth itself--a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence--at the center of the nation's history. The American experiment rests on three ideas--\"these truths,\" Jefferson called them--political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eThese Truths\u003c\/em\u003e tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation's truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change. \"A nation born in contradiction... will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,\" Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With \u003cem\u003eThese Truths\u003c\/em\u003e, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"W. W. Norton \u0026 Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51379395166493,"sku":"9780393357424","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0988\/1259\/2413\/files\/imageloader_2da7037a-c1f6-4c03-ada1-1c5e71c14338.jpg?v=1779707501"},{"product_id":"we-the-people-a-history-of-the-u-s-constitution","title":"We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution","description":"The U.S. Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world but also one of the most difficult to amend. Jill Lepore, Harvard professor of history and law, explains why in \u003cem\u003eWe the People\u003c\/em\u003e, the most original history of the Constitution in decades--and an essential companion to her landmark history of the United States, \u003cem\u003eThese Truths\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Arriving on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding--the anniversary, too, of the first state constitutions--\u003cem\u003eWe the People\u003c\/em\u003e offers a wholly new history of the Constitution. \"One of the Constitution's founding purposes was to prevent change,\" Lepore writes. \"Another was to allow for change without violence.\" Relying on the extraordinary database she has assembled at the Amendments Project, Lepore recounts centuries of attempts, mostly by ordinary Americans, to realize the promise of the Constitution. Yet nearly all those efforts have failed. Although nearly twelve thousand amendments have been introduced in Congress since 1789, and thousands more have been proposed outside its doors, only twenty-seven have ever been ratified. More troubling, the Constitution has not been meaningfully amended since 1971. Without recourse to amendment, she argues, the risk of political violence rises. So does the risk of constitutional change by presidential or judicial fiat.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Challenging both the Supreme Court's monopoly on constitutional interpretation and the flawed theory of \"originalism,\" Lepore contends in this \"gripping and unfamiliar story of our own past\" that the philosophy of amendment is foundational to American constitutionalism. The framers never intended for the Constitution to be preserved, like a butterfly, under glass, Lepore argues, but expected that future generations would be forever tinkering with it, hoping to mend America by amending its Constitution through an orderly deliberative and democratic process.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Lepore's remarkable history seeks, too, to rekindle a sense of constitutional possibility. Congressman Jamie Raskin writes that Lepore \"has thrown us a lifeline, a way of seeing the Constitution neither as an authoritarian straitjacket nor a foolproof magic amulet but as the arena of fierce, logical, passionate, and often deadly struggle for a more perfect union.\" At a time when the Constitution's vulnerability is all too evident, and the risk of political violence all too real, \u003cem\u003eWe the People\u003c\/em\u003e, with its shimmering prose and pioneering research, hints at the prospects for a better constitutional future, an amended America.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Liveright Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51379401457949,"sku":"9781631496080","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0988\/1259\/2413\/files\/imageloader_ddecea63-ec2c-4b14-91ff-fa70445254eb.jpg?v=1779707539"},{"product_id":"the-rise-and-fall-of-the-artificial-state","title":"The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Much in history is headlong but few grand transformations have been more precipitate or more heedless than the rise of . . . the Artificial State,\" writes Jill Lepore in this passionate account of how rule by machine has ravaged the world. Inspired by Hannah Arendt's \u003cem\u003eThe Origins of Totalitarianism\u003c\/em\u003e, which argued in 1951 that the machinery of modern life was reshaping the very fundamentals of human existence, Lepore, profoundly disturbed by the technology revolution and by the soulless inundation of artificial intelligence, unfurls a new history for our own twenty-first century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Building on an essay in \u003cem\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e in 2024, Lepore's clarion call traces our increasing dependence on and strangulation by data. Political campaigns, awash in an avalanche of fake bots, have been reduced to attention-mining algorithms, while multinational media corporations dictate public discourse, and the era of the liberal nation-state seems to be coming to a rapid end, replaced by billionaire technocrats reliant on autocracy and the tools of AI.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e With Orwellian overtones, \u003cem\u003eThe Rise and Fall of the Artificial State\u003c\/em\u003e demonstrates how technology has corroded global democracy, leading to the destruction of both human community and capacity for self-government, creating a new form of AI government, a digital citizen's assembly, where AI will recommend the course of action to humans in place of human-run legislatures. Especially sobering with this proliferation of \"dizzying, ever-changing schemes, prophesies, and predictions\" is that the Artificial State has come at the expense of the natural world, leading to catastrophic loss of wildlife habitat and biodiversity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Deliberately alarming, \u003cem\u003eThe Rise and Fall of the Artificial State\u003c\/em\u003e, despite its abundance of dire facts, is not a funeral dirge; rather, it's an inspiring wake-up call, written in Lepore's typically elegiac prose, which demonstrates that nothing about the Artificial State was inevitable, for it is a \"\u003cem\u003egovernment without consent, even government without humans.\u003c\/em\u003e\" It can, Lepore asserts, be dismantled. Other heinous systems, like feudalism, fascism, and slavery, have also been dismantled, but disassembly requires identifying the parts, tracing the sources. It requires telling a new history. This is the purpose of \u003cem\u003eThe Rise and Fall of the Artificial State\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Liveright Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51379426623773,"sku":"9781324098423","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0988\/1259\/2413\/files\/imageloader_25cd991e-389e-4ab1-b645-b9e8e8e06be9.jpg?v=1779707701"},{"product_id":"these-truths-a-history-of-the-united-states-1","title":"These Truths: A History of the United States","description":"\u003cp\u003eTwo hundred fifty years after the United States declared its independence and cast off tyranny, distinguished historian Jill Lepore reconsiders the sweep and direction of American history in this revised edition of her international best-selling book \u003cem\u003eThese Truths\u003c\/em\u003e. Widely hailed for its \"sweeping, sobering account of the American past\" (\u003cem\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/em\u003e), Lepore's history of America places truth itself--a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence--at the center of the nation's history. The American experiment rests on three ideas--\"these truths,\" Jefferson called them--political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003cem\u003eThese Truths\u003c\/em\u003e tells this uniquely American story, beginning in 1492, asking whether the course of events over more than five centuries has proven the nation's truths, or belied them. To answer that question, Lepore wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, the nature of technological change, and now the age of Trump. \"A nation born in contradiction . . . will fight, forever, over the meaning of its history,\" Lepore writes, but engaging in that struggle by studying the past is part of the work of citizenship. With \u003cem\u003eThese Truths\u003c\/em\u003e, Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"W. W. Norton \u0026 Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51863191257373,"sku":"9781324130765","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0988\/1259\/2413\/files\/imageloader_0c16bddb-589d-4952-8011-ca24e012d05a.jpg?v=1781157861"},{"product_id":"this-america-the-case-for-the-nation","title":"This America: The Case for the Nation","description":"At a time of much despair over the future of liberal democracy, Jill Lepore makes a stirring case for the nation in \u003cem\u003eThis America\u003c\/em\u003e, a follow-up to her much-celebrated history of the United States, \u003cem\u003eThese Truths\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e With dangerous forms of nationalism on the rise, Lepore, a Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, repudiates nationalism here by explaining its long history--and the history of the idea of the nation itself--while calling for a \"new Americanism\" a generous patriotism that requires an honest reckoning with America's past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Lepore begins her argument with a primer on the origins of nations, explaining how liberalism, the nation-state, and liberal nationalism, developed together. Illiberal nationalism, however, emerged in the United States after the Civil War--resulting in the failure of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow, and the restriction of immigration. Much of American history, Lepore argues, has been a battle between these two forms of nationalism, liberal and illiberal, all the way down to the nation's latest, bitter struggles over immigration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Defending liberalism, as \u003cem\u003eThis America\u003c\/em\u003e demonstrates, requires making the case for the nation. But American historians largely abandoned that defense in the 1960s when they stopped writing national history. By the 1980s they'd stopped studying the nation-state altogether and embraced globalism instead. \"When serious historians abandon the study of the nation,\" Lepore tellingly writes, \"nationalism doesn't die. Instead, it eats liberalism.\" But liberalism is still in there, Lepore affirms, and \u003cem\u003eThis America\u003c\/em\u003e is an attempt to pull it out. \"In a world made up of nations, there is no more powerful way to fight the forces of prejudice, intolerance, and injustice than by a dedication to equality, citizenship, and equal rights, as guaranteed by a nation of laws.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A manifesto for a better nation, and a call for a \"new Americanism,\" \u003cem\u003eThis America\u003c\/em\u003e reclaims the nation's future by reclaiming its past.","brand":"Liveright Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51875654631709,"sku":"9781631496417","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0988\/1259\/2413\/files\/imageloader_6e88eb68-deff-4e1d-84ed-8f6f976af680.jpg?v=1781329367"},{"product_id":"the-story-of-america-essays-on-origins","title":"The Story of America: Essays on Origins","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jill Lepore, a history of American origin stories\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Story of America\u003c\/i\u003e, Harvard historian and \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e staff writer Jill Lepore investigates American origin stories--from John Smith's account of the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural address--to show how American democracy is bound up with the history of print. Over the centuries, Americans have read and written their way into a political culture of ink and type. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePart civics primer, part cultural history, \u003ci\u003eThe Story of America\u003c\/i\u003e excavates the origins of everything from the paper ballot and the Constitution to the I.O.U. and the dictionary. Along the way it presents fresh readings of Benjamin Franklin's \u003ci\u003eWay to Wealth\u003c\/i\u003e, Thomas Paine's \u003ci\u003eCommon Sense\u003c\/i\u003e, \"The Raven\" by Edgar Allan Poe, and \"Paul Revere's Ride\" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, as well as histories of lesser-known genres, including biographies of presidents, novels of immigrants, and accounts of the Depression. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFrom past to present, Lepore argues, Americans have wrestled with the idea of democracy by telling stories. In this thoughtful and provocative book, Lepore offers at once a history of origin stories and a meditation on storytelling itself.","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51875654697245,"sku":"9780691159591","price":20.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0988\/1259\/2413\/files\/imageloader_9cf7bfbc-d9f6-49cc-8f2a-2e59e78b38df.jpg?v=1781329369"}],"url":"https:\/\/revelationsbooks.com\/collections\/jill-alepore.oembed","provider":"Revelations Books and Treasures LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}