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Essays on Origins
Princeton University Press
October 2012
On Sale: October 7, 2012
420 pages
ISBN: 069115399X
EAN: 9780691153995
Kindle: B0091XBWMW
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
In The Story of America, Harvard historian and New
Yorker 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. Part civics primer, part cultural history,
The Story of America 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 Way to Wealth, Thomas
Paine's Common Sense, "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. From 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
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