These Truths: A History of the United States

Though matters of truth and the proper reading of history may feel like recent concerns, issues regarding textual authority, the origins of the United States, and the manipulation of historical records to form creation myths have persisted since the country’s nascence. Arguably, the concern about truth in historiography, or our telling of history based on records, starts with the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas and his transcription of Christopher Columbus’s Diario. The diary had been copied in the 1530s, then disappeared twice in the 18th and 19th centuries. Lepore reminds readers that “[h]istory is the study of what remains, what’s left behind” (4). It is a story subject to perpetual revision as its narrators learn more and adjust their perspectives to contemporary cultural and social mores. This consideration of historiography and truth could likely also apply to Walter Raleigh’s history of the world, written in prison, Edward Coke’s revision of English common law for colonial administration, and James Madison’s record of the Philadelphia Convention. Though concrete facts—dates, names, and actual events—are key to the retelling of history, it is not entirely objective, as the perspective of either the witness or the narrator infiltrates the text.