Jill Lepore Books In Order

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Pages from History Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Jill Lepore is an Affiliate Professor of Law at Harvard University and a Professor of American History. She is also the host of The Last Archive a popular podcast and also a contributor at “The New Yorker.” She has written several books including the international bestseller “These Truths: A History of the United States” that she published in 2018. The novel would make the list of the top ten nonfiction works of the decade by “Time” magazine. Jill also made the longlist for the National Book Award for her work “If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future”. It also made the shortlist for the McKinsey/Financial Times Book Award. Apart from her writing, she has also written some pieces in the “New Yorker” contemplating 2020 as the year of the pandemic. She has also penned articles on different themes including the literature of plagues, loneliness, living indoors, race riot commissions, the decline of democracy, policing, and the census.

Lepore was brought up in West Boylston, Massachusetts. Incidentally, she lived on Franklin Street and would, later on, come to write the biography of Jane the youngest forgotten sister of Benjamin Franklin. However, she never thought she was foreordained for a career in history. Growing up, she was not interested in visiting Gettysburg and did not read the biographies of prominent Americans such as Amelia Earhart. Even so, she was always interested in the journeys of these people. During the weekends, her father who was a teacher at the local high school would lend her the typewriter in his office and she would type out stories with funny titles. Jill always dreamed of becoming an author and while she loved writing about history, she would write about any topic under the sun. As a teen, she got an ROTC scholarship to attend Tufts where she was a mathematics major. But she soon dropped out of the class and in 1987 she got her bachelor’s in English from Tufts University. In 1990, she graduated from the University of Michigan with an American Culture master’s degree and then got her doctorate in Yale where she majored in American Studies. By 2003, she was a member of the History Department at Harvard and over several years between 2005 and 2014 she was Chair of the Literature and History Program. Given her distinction in undergraduate teaching, she was made Harvard College Professor in 2012.

Jill Lepore’s debut novel was “The Name of War” that she first published in 1998. The Alfred A. Knopf published novel was an exploration of the Native American uprising of the 17th century that is still deemed one of the deadliest conflicts in US history given how many people died. The Bancroft Prize-winning work analyzed and told the story of the uprising from the Native American perspective. Over the years, Lepore has won many accolades and has even made the shortlist for the Pulitzer Prize. The author has been elected to the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts. Much of her research has been funded by organizations such as the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Charles Warren Center, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and the Pew Foundation. Much of her work is an exploration of the asymmetries and absences in the historical record. Jill is known for focusing on technologies and histories of evidence. As a professor, she teaches American Political History, evidence, the humanities, and historical methods. In 2017, she cofounded the Democracy Project a program that intends to teach a short course on the history of the US. She is also a professor at Harvard Law School.

“The Secret History of Wonder Woman” by Jill Lepore is the story of an American psychologist William Moulton Marston that is credited with the invention of the lie detector test. He had tried and failed in a range of careers but when he decided to try out comic books in 1941 he got the assistance of his longtime mistress and his wife and came up with “Wonder Woman.” Marston had been influenced by the resurgent suffragist movement during the early years of the 20th century and deemed himself a feminist. The biography of William Marston also looks into the history of the less than the traditional family that he made for himself and the women that were involved with him seemed to agree to the arrangement. It is a sensational tell-all story that reveals some previously unknown secrets that informed the making of” Wonder Woman” that have never been brought to light until now. For a Harvard academic, the work is a page-turner and the discussions of the making of wonder woman are very interesting. It is not surprising that the character would become quite controversial during those years given that comics came with a lot of bondage and Wonder Woman was practically naked.

Jill Lepore’s These Truths: A History of the United States is a story that tells of the fight for the principles of the Declaration of Independence that have been sometimes fulfilled and often betrayed. The author examines the ideals of happiness, equality, and liberty that have resulted in conflict right from the founding of the country to the colonial times when slave owners from the south protested taxation. These Americans took the fact that they did not have representatives that supported slavery yet they were taxed as a form of slavery. She also writes about civil rights, the struggle of immigrants, women, and African Americans, and the rights of voters and workers. Lepore has progressive perspectives and puts in the spotlight persons the runaway slaves of George Washington and Mary Lease the eminent People’s Party orator. She writes an even handed analysis of the partisan struggles between the different parties and castigates the sanctimonious transphobia, racism, homophobia, and sexism of the campus left and the many crimes of the alt-right. Jill sometimes writes psychedelic poetic images and portrays the Civil War armies as fiery monsters and unstoppable machines with steel scales that are let loose to maraud and maul even the innocent. Much of the story feels like a “Transformers” movie even as she leaves out a lot of historical detail to emphasize evolving ideology, constitutional struggles, and politics. In doing so, she transforms a conflicted and complex history into a focused, coherent, and engrossing narrative that has a ton of great insights for her readers.

“Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin” by Jill Lepore tells the story of Jane Franklin the youngest sister of Benjamin Franklin. She was born in 1712 in Boston and lived to the ripe old age of eighty two years. She was tutored by Ben Franklin who taught her writing and reading until he left home aged seventeen. She then learned the craft of housewifery from her mother while her father taught her how to make candles to sell. She got pregnant aged fifteen and got married to a saddler name Edward Mecum who was so poor that he had to live with his in laws after their wedding. Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin was involved with the Revolution and rarely spent any time back home in Boston while his sister Jane hardly left. Nonetheless, the siblings would constantly communicate through writing as they discussed family business and current events. Lepore creates an inventive and beautiful story that is creatively and delicately crafted even though she did not have access to much of what she wrote during this time. Jane Franklin had written very little apart from the letters and a small book where the recorded the deaths and births of her dozen children. Jill reveals the respectful and affectionate relationship between Jane and Ben thus providing an invaluable perspective of the women and men that shaped the America of the 18th century.