These Truths: A History of the United States

As the author and researcher of These Truths, Jill Lepore uses the text to pose some of her own questions about the success of the American experiment. Additionally, her approach to historiography focuses greater attention on how the subjugation of particular groups—indigenous peoples, people of African descent, and women—were key in the formation of the new republic. In the Introduction, Lepore notes that she wrote the book because no one had attempted to write a history of the United States from beginning to end in many years. One reason this is important, for Lepore, is that she regards the study of history as a method of inquiry. Her approach to the writing of this history is humble. She is careful to note that she did not set out to write the entire history of the United States, as no one could do that. Instead, she has confined herself to writing what she believes a nation in the early 21st century needs to know about its past.

Described as “a broad-shouldered sea captain from Genoa,” Christopher Columbus, who became a figure of controversy in the last quarter of the 20th century, was an Italian explorer, funded by the Spanish monarchy, who inadvertently “discovered” North America (3).