Theories of history used to be supernatural: the divine ruled time; the hand of God, a special providence, lay behind the fall of each sparrow. If the present differed from the past, it was usually worse: supernatural theories of history… — Jill Lepore Copy Share Image
Weirdly, there have been a lot of critics of conservatism, but very few critics of innovation. As a culture, we are deeply paranoid about… — Jill Lepore Copy Share Image
The study of history requires investigation, imagination, empathy, and respect. Reverence just doesn't enter into it. — Jill Lepore Copy Share Image
The very first television ad targeted to women was produced by the Eisenhower-Nixon campaign in 1956. It includes footage of a woman supervising her children doing their homework at the kitchen table. — Jill Lepore Copy Share
Republicans were more pro-choice than Democrats up until the late 1980s. — Jill Lepore Copy Share Image
It feels silly to watch endless hours of winter sports every four years, when we never watch them any other time, and we don't… — Jill Lepore Copy Share Image
Historians once assumed that when childhood mortality was high, people must not have loved their children very much; it would have been too painful.… — Jill Lepore Copy Share Image
When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood NOT as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of… — Jill Lepore Copy Share Image
'Doctor Who' is, unavoidably, a product of mid-twentieth-century debates about Britain's role in the world as its empire unravelled. — Jill Lepore Copy Share Image
“Still, it strikes me that, taken together, they do make an argument, and it is this: the rise of American democracy is bound up with the history of reading and writing, which is one of the reasons the study of American history is inseparable from the study of American literature. In the early United States, literacy rates rose and the… — Jill Lepore Copy Share
One day, I was playing 'The Game of Life,' the board game, with a mess of kids, and I wasn't quite sure how, but… — Jill Lepore Copy Share Image
