These Truths is a great book by Harvard Historian Jill Lepore. It traces American Political History from it's discovery to 2016. This year, for the first time, I purchased an audible.com subscription and this book was the second audio book I ever listened to. The first being Hans Rosling's Factfulness. These Truths and Factfulness are both books recommended by Bill Gates on his blog gatesnotes.com.
These Truths was a great eye opener to me - especially so because I immigrated to the United States for work and started my life as an American citizen in 2015 without any formal training in her history. Until I read this book, I was equal parts amazed and consternated about how and why Americans made political decisions they did. Trump's election was the most perplexing phenomenon to me. That piqued my interest and aroused suspicion that I was naive, that there was something about her that I just didn't know. Reading Gates' review about the book, it was clear to me that I needed to read the book!
I was not ready for it! Not having had any formal American Education in the K-12 sense, These Truths was a tsunami of information for me. The book starts somewhere near the discovery of America, covers pre-constitution times, goes into details of how the constitution itself was written, the lives of individual founding fathers, then goes into details of civil war and the winning over of all states, of the years up to emancipation, then voting rights for blacks (and all other struggles), Jim Crowe, women's suffrage, the evolution of the three branches of government (supreme court was a toothless in the beginning), amendments, failures of amendments (ERA), civil rights, voter suppression and a 100 other things that I have already forgotten.
I found the book very interesting, well narrated (by Jill Lepore herself) and fast paced. The book has a confident style (meaning, it leaves no dispute in the mind of the reader) that comes across as a statement of facts (rather than a statements of opinion).
I learnt many things about America - some consequential and others not so much. For example, the word "polls" meaning elections comes from a past usage of the word "poll". "Polls" are the tops of the heads as seen by a person sitting on high ground watching a crowd of humans. An election (a "poll") was simply the process of counting heads in a room (and apportioning 3/5ths of white vote to black persons).
Through this book, it is evident to me that the founding fathers had no clue or any prescience about how the future would play out. Too many people in today's world apply way too much significance and weight to the constitution itself and have completely forgotten the times and events between 1776 (declaration of independence) and 2020 (today). This is convenient to many because at the very best, they can prolong the needless ambiguity of a 200 year old document into current and future days. At worst, they can cause considerable harm by halting the progress of our nation and its people. Without reading this book (or any other good history book), it feels like the constitution is a bible and we are all christians (or quran and muslim etc.). After having read the book, it is clear the facts are much more nuanced.
In case one does not know (as I did not know), the words "These Truths" come from the preamble to the declaration of independence. The complete sentence is: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
I am glad I follow gatesnotes.com and I am glad I read this book. I highly recommend it.
These Truths was a great eye opener to me - especially so because I immigrated to the United States for work and started my life as an American citizen in 2015 without any formal training in her history. Until I read this book, I was equal parts amazed and consternated about how and why Americans made political decisions they did. Trump's election was the most perplexing phenomenon to me. That piqued my interest and aroused suspicion that I was naive, that there was something about her that I just didn't know. Reading Gates' review about the book, it was clear to me that I needed to read the book!
I was not ready for it! Not having had any formal American Education in the K-12 sense, These Truths was a tsunami of information for me. The book starts somewhere near the discovery of America, covers pre-constitution times, goes into details of how the constitution itself was written, the lives of individual founding fathers, then goes into details of civil war and the winning over of all states, of the years up to emancipation, then voting rights for blacks (and all other struggles), Jim Crowe, women's suffrage, the evolution of the three branches of government (supreme court was a toothless in the beginning), amendments, failures of amendments (ERA), civil rights, voter suppression and a 100 other things that I have already forgotten.
I found the book very interesting, well narrated (by Jill Lepore herself) and fast paced. The book has a confident style (meaning, it leaves no dispute in the mind of the reader) that comes across as a statement of facts (rather than a statements of opinion).
I learnt many things about America - some consequential and others not so much. For example, the word "polls" meaning elections comes from a past usage of the word "poll". "Polls" are the tops of the heads as seen by a person sitting on high ground watching a crowd of humans. An election (a "poll") was simply the process of counting heads in a room (and apportioning 3/5ths of white vote to black persons).
Through this book, it is evident to me that the founding fathers had no clue or any prescience about how the future would play out. Too many people in today's world apply way too much significance and weight to the constitution itself and have completely forgotten the times and events between 1776 (declaration of independence) and 2020 (today). This is convenient to many because at the very best, they can prolong the needless ambiguity of a 200 year old document into current and future days. At worst, they can cause considerable harm by halting the progress of our nation and its people. Without reading this book (or any other good history book), it feels like the constitution is a bible and we are all christians (or quran and muslim etc.). After having read the book, it is clear the facts are much more nuanced.
In case one does not know (as I did not know), the words "These Truths" come from the preamble to the declaration of independence. The complete sentence is: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
I am glad I follow gatesnotes.com and I am glad I read this book. I highly recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment