The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History

[Adsos Letter]

by Jill LePore. Just sitting down to read this one; anyone else read it?

I read LePore's A is for American for a Graduate seminar, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to this one.

[Skittles]

1. tell us the book's description

[Adsos Letter]

2. It appears to address the manipulation of the history of the American Revolution

in order to support political ideology. I'll be better able to review it after i've finished it. Just wondered if anyone else had read it.

I suppose the question was premature.

Please don't kick my ass, Skittles. :scared:

But if you do, please wear the 6" black heels... :D

[Skittles]

3. LOL

but usually, there's a short description on the book's cover/back/first page describing the contents

[Adsos Letter]

4. From Amazon (so much easier to copy & paste rather than typing out the whole thing)

with my execrable hunt-and-peck typing skills:

"In The Whites of Their Eyes, Lepore reviews the history of the American Revolution--in order to explore, and explode, the way the 21st-century Right uses that history. She criticizes history-according-to-the-Tea-Party on two levels. First, and unsurprisingly, she finds that the Tea Party's description of the past is simply incorrect at many turns. More interesting is Lepore's second criticism. In their asking the (unanswerable) question, 'What would the Founders do?', the Tea Party invites people to have a very strange relationship with the past: 'People who ask what the founders would do quite commonly declare that they know, they know, they just know what the founders would do, and, mostly, it comes to this: if only they could see us now, they would be rolling over in their graves. . . . We have failed to obey their sacred texts, holy writ,' Lepore writes provocatively. 'That's not history. It's not civil religion, the faith in democracy that binds Americans together. It's not originalism or even constitutionalism. That's fundamentalism.' -- Lauren Winner, Books & Culture"

[Skittles]

5. hey, that sounds like a good read

yes INDEED

[Adsos Letter]

6. I probably should have waited to actually FINISH LePore's book before I started this thread

I remain nonplussed by my action; yet, I am still willing to type.

There's an answer in there somewhere.

[groovedaddy]

8. No reason to wait. I think you did the right thing. Let the discussion begin!...wait, it has! n.t

[Jim__]

7. I haven't - but I intend to now. Thanks for the post. - n/t

[YankeyMCC]

9. Don't regret starting the thread early because I thank you

for making me aware of Jill LePore. I was looking through some of her other works and it looks like my want to read list just got several more editions.

Thanks

[Adsos Letter]

10. You're welcome! Love your sig-line by Ingersoll, "The Great Agnostic"

I became somewhat fascinated by his story when I first read about him in Susan Jacoby's Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

You've reminded me that I want to read more on him. :hi:

BTW: LePore's work A Is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States is definitely worth the time.