John Brovsky

"These Truths": 200 pages; 35,000 words; many visuals

Review of Jill Lepore’s These Truths

Lepore’s study of America’s intellectual history, she uncovers some very interesting and explainable conditions that expose America’s ignorance. The ever-popular Christopher Columbus discovered that the natives didn’t have a religion, they were inferior humans because he couldn’t understand them, and they didn’t live up to his expectations—that in the East, there existed a Thomas More utopia waiting to be “discovered” by the pioneering Europeans.
When Columbus returned to Spain, he had the “American” specimens for all to see and the Pope, in an act of classic capitalism, seeded the New World to Spain.
Wanting to find gold and precious gems, the Spanish settled for cheap labor. The European imperialists nations struggled to match the expansion and wealth of the Muslim empire and found that the precious commodity in Africa was not precious metal or jewels, but labor. Thus, the slave trade. And the New World was the expanse they could exploit.
This is not the history of America that I studied in school during the 60s. I would be hard pressed to find out that not one of the studied Jesuit priests were even aware of this situation. In a 10th grade history class, the priest asked the class about the tender point of the Civil War, and he threatened to flunk any response that had “slavery” in it.
Later in my school career in college, I took a once-a-week 4-hour course lead by a visiting professor from the community college. Not being a Jesuit caused suspicion among the college community and resulted in a dim view of the importance of his class. But it was the most thrilling class about America that I completed. I never forgot how much the teacher was able to help the students see that America promises, dreams, and thinks, still, about being a utopia. And he didn’t fashion it out of myths. He laid out the hard facts and asked us to deal with it. And when I read Lepore’s intellectual history of America, I remembered how thrilling that a study of a past could be.
Lepore instructs, “Most of what once existed is gone. Flesh decays, wood rots, walls fall down, books burn, nature takes one toll, malice another. History is the study of what remains, what’s left behind, which can be almost anything, as long as the ravages of war; letters, diaries, DNA, gravestones, coins, television broadcasts, paintings, DVDs, viruses, abandoned Facebook pages, the transcripts o congressional hearings, the ruins of buildings. Professor Lepore looks at these remnants and connects the dots, presenting and engaging the reader in the best explanation of American history that I’ve ever learned.
I hope you enjoy my notes on her book.

1.  These Truths: 137 pages; 19,180 words; many visuals

2.  These Truths:  12 pages; 3396 words; many visuals

3.  These Truths: 16 pages: 4817 words, many visuals

4.  These Truths: 24 pages; 7442 words, many visuals

5.  These Truths: 1 page; 143 words, no visuals