Advance proofs of Jill Lepore’s new book, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History, forthcoming in September from Princeton University Press, arrived earlier this week as something of a surprise. The book was not listed in the press’s new catalog, and her previous works, including The Name of War (1998) and New York Burning (2005), were published by Knopf. Curious about how Lepore, a professor of American history at Harvard University (and a novelist), settled on Princeton, I got in touch with Brigitta van Rheinberg, editor-in-chief of the press.
About a year ago, van Rheinberg explains, she and Ruth O’Brien, a professor of political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and editor of Princeton’s The Public Square series, traveled to Cambridge to woo Lepore. It worked. In May, Lepore proposed a book on the rise of the Tea Party and the movement’s embrace of “historical fundamentalism,” a tendency that Lepore defines in the introduction like this:
“The belief that a particular and quite narrowly defined past—”the founding”—is ageless and sacred and to be worshipped; that certain historical texts—”the founding documents”—are to be read in the same spirit with which religious fundamentalists read, for instance, the Ten Commandments; that the Founding Fathers were divinely inspired; that the academic study of history (whose standards of evidence and methods of analysis are based on skepticism), is a conspiracy and, furthermore, blasphemy; and that political arguments grounded in appeals to the founding documents, as sacred texts, and to the Founding Fathers, as prophets, are, therefore, incontrovertible.”
The Whites of Their Eyes, says van Rheinberg “was written and produced in record time.” How fast? The book is based on an article Lepore wrote for the May 3 issue of The New Yorker, where she is a staff writer. “I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep this spring,” Lepore says, before adding, “I write all the time, and always have.” The original draft of The New Yorker article was about three times as long as the published version, and Lepore drew from other essays she has written over the past five years.
She felt compelled to write the book, she says, because “it’s not every day that what a scholar teaches—in my case, the American Revolution—is taken up on the streets, by people shouting, “Party Like It’s 1773!” I found that fascinating; I think it’s important, however evanescent.”
Lepore says that she chose to publish the book with Princeton because the topic is a “perfect fit” for The Public Square series. For her next book, however—a short history of life and death titled “The Quick and the Dead”—Lepore will return to Knopf. She is also at work on a book about Jane Mecom, Benjamin Franklin’s sister. Based on Lepore’s track record, we can expect both very, very soon.—Evan R. Goldstein
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15 Responses to Harvard Prof Takes Aim at the Tea Party
crunchycon - July 23, 2010 at 9:56 am
How like an academic (liberal being assumed) who is part of the mainstream media to rush to get out a hack job on the tea party well prior to the November elections. The quoted passage is misleading on its face, and like rumors and inuendo, contains grains of truth, or ideals of the tea party misrepresented, rendering it false almost in its entirety. I’ll leave it to others to detail where she is wrong as I’m off to fulfill my duties for a little while.Did she rely on the mainstream media’s accounts of what the tea party is? It would appear so. Has she ever attended a tea party and talked to the individuls attending herself? Has she listened to speakers, herself, at a rally? Obviously, no.
11333651 - July 23, 2010 at 10:10 am
crunchycon,Were you privileged to review an advance copy of The Whites of Their Eyes, or are you judging the author and her work on the basis of this small sample of the book’s contents? If the latter, how unfortunate.You raise several questions in your last paragraph. Are the answers you supply based on fact, or on your suppositions? If the latter, how unfortunate.This post of yours and others raise a question in my mind: Do you read and contribute to the Chronicle’s posts as a means to enhance others’ understanding, advance a topic, and generally promote growth, or do you use your talents to advocate unrelentingly for your static world view? If the latter, how unfortunate.
11159995 - July 23, 2010 at 12:08 pm
How unfortunate that “crunchycon” reaches conclusions about this book and its author before having read it.—Sandy Thatcher
estepa - July 23, 2010 at 12:15 pm
crunchycon–If you would take the time to read Lepore’s New Yorker article you would see that she did in fact speak with Tea Partiers and attend Tea Party events. If you were an historian, you would know that they although they study secondary sources, they rarely draw conclusions without consulting primary sources.
softshellcrab - July 23, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Right on crunchycon! The book is simply another hatchet job against conservatives by yet another ever-so-drearily-liberal academic. This is why the bulk of the responses here will attack you, because they are also written by ever-so-drearily-liberal academics,who comprise about 80-90% of acamedicians and who mostly are simply people with way too much time on their hands. The Tea Party scares the bejabbers out of these people. It is populated heavily by normal, every day, fair minded and self supporting patriotic Americans, the very people that the ever-so-drearily-liberal academics fear, despise and deprecate. LePore’s previous article was the basis for this book, and a look at that article will settle all bets. Don’t let them fool you and advance yet another liberal lie. The article was nothing but a slanted, fear-filled attack on the Tea Party activists. The Chronicle title to this piece is “Harvard Prof Takes Aim at Tea Party”, and the title was chosen for good reason. Why don’t the people above who are attacking you also attack the title writer, if they want to take issue with commenting on the book before reading it? To paraphrase comment #4 just above, “If you would take the time to read Lepore’s New Yorker article…” you would see that she did in fact attack the Tea Party left and right. Stand your ground. I hope the Tea Party can take back America from the Lepore’s and other ever-so-drearily-liberal academics. The attacks mean you are making good points.
19682010 - July 23, 2010 at 2:50 pm
This is merely a hypothesis and not a statement — because I don’t have data:Null Hypothesis: Crunchycon and Softshellcrab scare academics because they post on the Chronicle’s Comments Section — without reference to DATA. When real academics (conservative or liberal) write in reference to questions that are of an empirical nature they seek out data — *before* arriving at their conclusions. Crunchycon attacks a book without having read it. And Softshellcrab asserts that 80-90% of academics are liberals without reference to any data. (BTW — the Higher Education Research Institute’s regular survey’s of faculty collects actual data on the political leanings of faculty.)If a student wrote an essay criticizing a book — without having read it — wouldn’t that essay merit a grade of F?
crunchycon - July 23, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Thank you, softshellcrab, for your support. It is difficult for one to comment on che articles/opinions/blogs from a conservative worldview without being vilified, called all sorts of names or being dealt with with sarcasm lacking wit. However, I am becoming used to it, and will not stop commenting when I desire merely because the vast majority of those who read or comment cannot understand how I could have such a view. And 1968 — did you never, ever use cliff notes to write a last minute paper?
19682010 - July 23, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Crunchycon: I’m in my 50′s and never used cliff notes to write a paper — not in high school — not in college — not in grad school — not during my professional career.No cliff notes — not in a house, not with a mouse, not with a fox, not in a box! lol
11122741 - July 26, 2010 at 11:59 am
Oh my teapartiers and conservative standing up and speaking back; whatever will the liberals and ivy leaguers do except look for points of irrelevant pedentry to slap their wrists and attempt to act superior all the way to Novemeber. Grab the money while you can Jill so you can pay off you share of the national debt your gang has been racking up as the probability is low that you will get another shot. The truth of the matter is that the ivy league stepped to the plate and wiffed again as before.
rjones10 - July 26, 2010 at 12:24 pm
While most of us have to rely on Goldstein’s summary, if he is correct that Lepore’s The New Yorker article is the basis for her book, then this line (page 5) seems telling.”The history that Tea Partiers want to go back to is as much a fiction as the Lost Cause of the Confederacy”So, if the point of her book is “Tea Party” members are ignorant of or misrepresent the history they like to cite for their political arguments, then she probably (not having the read the book nor being a trained historian) is correct. If her argument is that point negates the political arguments themselves, then that is more dangerous ground. Also, it is dangerous to take a sample of a larger movement and generalize to the whole. As Lepore wrote a few years earlier, “Telling small stories, writing micro-histories, does not inevitably produce important scholarship. Just the opposite, alas, is far likelier.” We’ll have to see how broadly her coverage of the “Tea Party” entails. Covering only the demoracratic party of Alabama or only the democratic party in Vermont might produce vastly different narratives on that party. To Estpa’s point, in her article, Lepore focuses on (mainly) a single character and some brief interactions with a couple of other people while attending a couple of events. It’s interesting narrative, but problematic in rushing a book (is it because she really thinks the Tea Party movement is “evanescent”?) about an organization that is more a collection of regional and local movements than a single entity.
audmcl - July 26, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Pity the poor T-Cups who get rattled so easily. Had the pen truly been mightier than the sword, perhaps there would have been no Concord or Bunker Hill? But then who believes everything they were taught in a 1960′s history class? The T-Cups are still nothing more than a carnival ride, spinning in a circle with the same nausea and vertigo.
emwhite - July 26, 2010 at 1:47 pm
The far right attack squad once again springs into action, usually the first response to any article that lets it promote its anti-intellectual agenda. It’s so predictable that I start to wonder if these folk are really part of higher education at all but instead part of Karl Rove’s team.
gplm2000 - July 27, 2010 at 9:25 am
Hey emwhite and others, the values of the Tea Party have nothing to do with “The far right attack squad…”. Instead they are based on the principles found in the Constitution. Remember when legal meant legal rather than illegal is ok depending on who you are. Or when equal-under-the-law was for all US citizens instead of granting affirmative privileges depending on your race, gender or sexual preference. Or when a society was composed of like-thinking people. People who committed to live within the standards/values of a group, instead of a diverse society of people who hate the very society that gives them the privilege of living in it. Most intellectuals, especially those from Harvard and Princeton, do not understand these principles.
rodbell - July 27, 2010 at 4:38 pm
@ 19682010 (#6)I don’t know who taught you your methodology, but you’re apparently unclear on the concept of the null hypothesis:(“Null Hypothesis: Crunchycon and Softshellcrab scare academics because they post on the Chronicle’s Comments Section — without reference to DATA.”)That’s more like a “research hypothesis;” in ordinary terms, it’s your hypothesis. The “null hypothesis” generally states that the hypothesized correlation or pattern does not exist in reality. Then you “test” that hypothesis by gathering suitable information and showing (if your research hypothesis is true) that the null hypothesis is empirically not true. I imagine you’re an English teacher, a category of intellectual populated by many admirable and interesting folks, though prone to natter on with too much confidence in what they suppose is their intellectual grasp of how they feel about things. (Is this too snarky? I’ll do that sometimes.)
emwhite - July 27, 2010 at 8:03 pm
Thanks to gplm2000, number 13, for illustrating my point in number 12 so perfectly.