The American Beast: Essays, 2012-2022

by Jill Lepore

A panoptical vision of modern America, from the brilliant mind of Jill Lepore.

The past decade has marked a shift in America's trajectory. Jill Lepore, the acclaimed writer and New Yorker columnist, has been tracing its contested storylines in real time, beginning with the run-up to Donald Trump's election, through to the chaos and confusion left in its wake. Here we encounter Americans' rising techno-utopianism, frantic fractiousness, and unprecedented - but armed - aimlessness.

With the wit and verve that has made her the acclaimed national historian of a generation, these essays reflect on the consuming public fissures of this culture wars and the corrosion of the media; disruptive innovation and the future of technology; constitutional crises surrounding gun rights and the racial history behind the very language of insurrection. Balancing a penetrating personal lens with indispensable history, she makes sense of life in a moment of aberration and extremity that has left our political landscape forever changed.

The American Beast offers an arresting portrait of America, capturing the tumultuous relationship between the country's violent past and fractured present.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, History

400 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 9, 2023

About the author

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History, Harvard College Professor, and chair of Harvard's History and Literature Program. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker.

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best non-fiction book on race, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; The Name of War (Knopf, 1998), winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, and the Berkshire Prize and a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Award.

A co-founder of the magazine Common-place, Lepore’s essays and reviews have also appeared in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, American Scholar, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Daily Beast, the Journal of American History and American Quarterly. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the Charles Warren Center, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. She has served as a consultant for the National Park Service and currently serves on the boards of the National Portrait Gallery and the Society of American Historians.
Jill lives in Cambridge,Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Sayanth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful mix of informative history and opinionated candor. Jill's stance on things is always clear in the essays, however her writing still compels you to consider a merit worthy opinion of your own

[David Peng · Rating 1 out of 5]

Firstly, bought this book thinking it would literally be about an American beast (maybe Big Foot, idk). This book ended up exceeding my expectations in the sense that it was even worse than I expected. It is self-indulgent and strings together loose ideas that are both out of context and incomplete. Some great ideas are introduced but fall short of any real insight beyond basic platitude. Overall, the book left me wanting more - specifically wanting to read a better book.

[Rod MacLeod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning, frightening, scholarly but above all eminently readable. Hard to know quite what to make of it all but I’m so glad I read it

[Hazel P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the articles in the book were previously published in "The Deadlines” so yes, it’s not a real new read 😉