The writing life of Harvard historian Jill Lepore
When she was a freshman at Tufts University, Jill Lepore received a scorching letter from Jill Lepore. Assigned by a high school English teacher, the note from her 14-year-old self chastised Lepore for neglecting what she loved. A math major and member of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, she dropped both and shifted to English. It was a wise choice. Now a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she has been a contributor since 2005, Lepore also finds time to regularly turn out widely admired books. The list includes “The Name of War” (1998), winner of the Bancroft Prize; “New York Burning” (2005), a Pulitzer Prize finalist; “The Story of America” (2012), short-listed for the PEN Literary Award for the Art of the Essay; “Book of Ages” (2013), a National Book Award finalist; “The Secret History of Wonder Woman” (2014); and “Joe Gould’s Teeth” (2016). Lepore, the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor...