Dr R Balashankar
The Story of America – Essays on Origins by Jill Lepore, Princeton University, Princeton University Press, Pp 416 (HB), $27.95
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” says Jill Lepore in her book The Story of America – Essays on Origins. In the early days of the United States, literacy rates rose and prices of printed material fell. “With everything from constitutions and ballots to almanacs and novels, Americans wrote and read their way into a political culture inked and stamped and pressed in print.”
Hence, she chose to tell the story of America by telling the story of literature and literary personalities. Jill says after the second World War, academic programmes in American history, American civiization and American studies thrived. But by the 1960s more and more students wanted to take up the studies of people hitherto neglected—women and children, slaves and free blacks, servants and immigrants. “By the 1970s, critics charged that scholars were writing more and more about less and less and for fewer and fewer.” But even these studies turned away, Jill says, from asking such questions as “What are the origins of American politics” out of an intellectual adherence to Cold War consensus.
“Writing history requires empathy, inquiry, and debate” and an argument, says Jill. Hence she started writing essays in The New Yorker on one topic at a time. This book is a collection of those essays. On the original settlers in America she says “Far from being the first European to settle on land that would one day become the United States, the English were Johnny-come-latlies.” The Spaniards were there before them. She describes how the early settlers struggled, with mortality rate as high as 75 or 80 per cent. And the early settlers wrote half lie half true stories of their adventures.
The story of the constitution of America is interesting. “The United States Constitution is one of the oldest written constitutions in the world and the first, anywhere, submitted to the people for their approval.” And Pocket constitutions have been in vogue since the 1790s with several political leaders carrying and flaunting it in public. “At 4,400 words, not counting amendments, the U.S. Constitution is one of the shortest in the world” and an overwhelming 86 per cent of Americans cherish it.
Webster, one of the most trusted dictionaries in the world was the effort of one man Noah Webster. His American Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1828. “It rivalled and dwarfed—Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary of the English Language.” Johnson listed some 43,000 words, Webster had more then 70,000. And he did this single-handed unlike Johnson who had help. It took him twenty-eight years to achieve the task.
Well, the book is full of engaging anecdotes, information and of course an insight in the form of commentary. There is a very absorbing essay on the inaugural speeches by the Presidents of America. It gives a glimpse into the seriousness with which this speech is treated and how down the decades they all have been preserved. Jill Lepore’s is an introduction into all who want to know America, beyond politics and economy. Simple, short and appealing, Jill has told the story of America well. Jill Lapore is a Professor of American History at Harvard and a staff writer at the New Yorker.
(Princeton University Press, 41, William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540)
