The idea that debt is necessary for trade, and has to be forgiven, is consequent to the rise of a market economy. The idea that debt is wrong and should be punished is a feature of a moral economy. — Jill Lepore Copy Share Image
In the ancient world, taxes were paid in kind: landowners paid in crops or livestock; the landless paid with their labor. Taxing trade made medieval monarchs rich and funded the early-modern state. — 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… — Jill Lepore Copy Share Image
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… — Jill Lepore Copy Share Image
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
