What Is True?

I spent many weeks reading this three pound, 789-page book. Last week I finally finished it. I’m overwhelmed. It is a history of the United States starting with the arrival of Columbus up until the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency. Lepore recounts our country’s struggles to find the “truths” that will make up our constitution, laws, and government. How they change. How they are wonderfully idealistic and yet so often hypocritical. How they claim to protect us from harm and yet often condone cruelty. And how they are an endless source of argument, bickering, and once, even war.

As I read I often shared (pestered?) friends with interesting facts I was learning about U.S. history. Yet when I arrived at the last part of the book, the part that happened during my lifetime, I started to feel swamped and exhausted. Too many unfair and hurtful things happened, often, things I had never heard about. While it was a fascinating book, what was the point? All during my reading of the book I avoided reading reviews. I just wanted to read and judge for myself.

I guess I would say the main message of all these pages is that this country has always struggled to agree on its guiding values. Mostly, it's a book about that struggle. Our constitution’s idealistic basis, “All men are created equal” really only applied to white men and just some white men at that. The ways African Americans were treated during the first years of our country continue to shock me, and I had known much of it before this book. Up until the Civil War, slavery played a role in almost every political decision made. After the Civil War, the 14^th amendment, ratified in 1868, included as citizens all persons born in American. Of course, this still just meant men. Over the years we have continued to discuss the same issues. Racism still exists though one can see incremental improvement as we go along. And while race may be one of our biggest struggles, there are others: poverty, heath care, immigration, trade, taxation, and our relationships with other countries. But it seems that it all boils down to this--the meaning of equality for all. And I do recommend this book.