Explore 2019: History

What kind of books do you love reading? I'm definitely a fan of novels and always have a running stack on my nightstand and in my library queue.

I can't remember where I saw this recommendation but during a recent library pickup I was reminded that I had ordered Jill Lepore’s "These Truths: A History of the United States." Honestly, I put it on my queue so long ago that I didn't remember I had ordered it. And I was also like, WHOA, I have never read a history book for fun (despite wanting to improve my knowledge -- which is really quite poor -- in this domain).

I'm admittedly daunted by the size of this volume, but I am ready to explore (my 2019 word) American history through this book. It's competing with these other 3 novels but I started in on "These Truths" + "Do Not Become Alarmed" in tandem last night!

And how is this for cosmic? Last night I was reading Jill Lepore's Introduction about the battle between Thomas Jefferson writing, "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" (i.e., God-given and divine) and Benjamin Franklin editing it to, "We hold these truths to be self-evident" (i.e., empirical and observable...scientific)...which in itself was a fascinating thing to learn about. And then it turned out that this morning Violet had a classroom event in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., and one of the lines she read aloud was, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." WHAT?!

Clearly, it's time for me to explore American history alongside my kids!

1_25.jpg