This America

April 15, 2019
In this somewhat underdeveloped “long essay,” historian Lepore (These Truths) sets out to summarize nationalism for a lay audience and rally historians to fight against its encroaching presence in American life. She takes readers through a history of nationalism’s contradictory and overlapping meanings, skipping between debates among the country’s founders and Donald Trump’s recent self-identification as a nationalist in order to examine the moral and philosophical struggles of citizenship, nationalism, and identity in a country that has at one time or another espoused everything from universal suffrage to the stripping of citizenship from those who cannot pass for white. Lepore differentiates between patriotism and nationalism and, in a move that may surprise readers, blames the 20th- and 21st-century resurgences of nationalism on historians who failed to construct a convincing, patriotic counternarrative as a bulwark against it (a mantle she took up herself with These Truths). While Lepore’s sense of personal urgency in taking up this topic is clear, the structure here is choppier and more repetitive than in previous works. Readers expecting Lepore’s usual precision and depth in characterizing the historical record will be disappointed.

Starred review from April 15, 2019
Following her impressive one-volume history of the United States, These Truths (2018), the acclaimed historian delivers a sharp, short history of nationalism, which she describes as "a contrivance, an artifice, a fiction." As New Yorker staff writer Lepore (American History/Harvard Univ.) notes, the term wasn't even used until the 19th century. In 1830s America, it was called sectionalism, and its adherents included those who favored slavery and native tribes who didn't recognize the government. By the 1880s, nationalism was fed by Jim Crow laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Dawes Act, and the Supreme Court ruling that Native Americans had no birthright to citizenship. The author clearly shows that, while patriotism is characterized by love of your home and people, nationalism features hatred of other countries and immigrants as well as those who are different at home. "Immigration policy is a topic for political debate; reasonable people disagree," writes Lepore. "But hating immigrants, as if they were lesser humans, is a form of nationalism that has nothing to do with patriotism and much to do with racism." Furthermore, she writes, "confusing nationalism and patriotism is not always innocent." The author also takes her fellow historians to task for missing the resurgence of nationalism following World War II. Though there was a comparatively brief lull in the 1930s, with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the nation fell apart. Churches were bombed, civil rights leaders were harassed and even killed, and the Ku Klux Klan reappeared. Hopes rose with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Immigration Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and in the 1980s, nationalism in the U.S. was all but dead. However, it continued to thrive in Bosnia and Rwanda and has carried over to Russia, Turkey, Poland, Hungary, and the Philippines. Lepore writes that while global trade, immigration reform, and the internet were supposed to end divisions, nationalism has surged; now we have politics of identity rather than nationality. A frank, well-written look at the dangers we face. We ignore them at our peril.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2019

Since the 1970s, claims Lepore (Harvard Univ.; These Truths), scholars have made more of an effort to emphasize the contributions of women, African Americans, and indigenous peoples. Lepore does not deny this importance because these groups were largely ignored by white men writing history and controlling governments. This concise volume calls for refocusing American history on the nation as a single entity because, as the author states, if people don't acknowledge their past, it will be interpreted by extremists with specific agendas. Lepore presents a fascinating appraisal of the history of American nationalism, stressing that by the mid-20th century it had been diminished from a patriotic love of country to a violent hatred of the other. Liberalism is promoted as the foundation for a current American nationalism: a government that protects the rights of its citizenry. The 14th and 15th Amendments are depicted as the roots of modern U.S. liberalism, and Lepore draws on the work of abolitionists and intellectuals such as Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Dubois to bolster her argument. VERDICT This is a call to reconsider what it means to be an American and for advocating liberalism as a corrective for "illiberal nationalism" pervading the country. Informed readers, especially historians, will welcome Lepore's nuanced, graceful interpretation.--Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2019
Historian and best-selling author Lepore follows her comprehensive These Truths: A History of the United States (2018) with an urgent and pithy book-length essay in which she argues for the viability of the nation. Readers seeking clear and relevant definitions of political concepts will appreciate this brisk yet thorough, frank, and bracing look at the ancient origins of the nation state versus the late-eighteenth-century coinage of the term nationalism and its alignment with exclusion and prejudice. Lepore succinctly observes, Patriotism is animated by love, nationalism by hate. She also reminds us that liberalism is the belief in individuals and human-rights-based governance. Lepore tracks the ongoing dispute between federal power and states' rights and the evolving criteria for citizenship as America became a nation to which anyone who affirms its civic ideals belongs. Yet each new wave of immigrants has instigated harsh reactions, while people of color, women, and others are still fighting for equality. The nation is that battle, Lepore writes, placing today's conflicts in context and calling for us to continue the struggle to deepen and protect American democracy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)