Which isn’t to say “These Truths” is an update of “A People’s History of the United States,” Howard Zinn’s radically revisionist book from 1980. Yes, Lepore pays heed to Frederick Douglass and Cesar Chavez and the African-American lawyer and civil rights activist Pauli Murray, among others. Recounting how such jarring discrepancies would play out in the founders’ actual lives, Lepore is matter-of-fact. After so many pages of cold, hard truths, the last thing I wanted was to have them warmed over. This cleareyed history had done its civic duty: It primed me to miss the Lepore who tells it like it is.

Source: New York Times September 11, 2018 18:48 UTC