To the heart of a movement
“I really wrestled in a whole new way with American history as I see it and teach it and study it,” said Jill Lepore, in a talk Wednesday night (Oct. 27) sponsored by the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, “and American history as it was being preached on the streets and on Fox News.” The David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and a writer for The New Yorker, Lepore was speaking of the challenges she faced in reporting her latest book, “The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History,” published this month to positive reviews. The book is something of a departure for Lepore in that it deals with contemporary politics, but it is also in some ways a logical progression from her previous work, which, as Warren Center Director Nancy Cott said in her introduction, tries to bring history...