From best-selling author Jill Lepore comes a compulsively readable narrative that gives students a balanced understanding of U.S history. At its heart, These Truths asks how well the nation—from its revolutionary birth to our fractious present—has lived up to its founding ideals of political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. New interactive tools help students develop critical thinking skills and practice historical inquiry to ask and answer this and other essential questions for themselves.

Highlights of the Second Edition’s new content:

• New coverage featuring key historical characters (including South Carolina pro-nullification writer Maria Henrietta Pinckney, Chicago reporter Ethel L. Payne, and conservative jurist Antonin Scalia) illustrates the efforts of diverse people and groups to influence political change, particularly through the Constitution.
• New “Revisiting the Guiding Question” features following the Conclusion of each chapter help students grasp the key takeaways of the chapter and think further about their own interpretation of the developments presented in the reading.
• A new “Historical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction” activity in the Norton Illumine Ebook gives students a foundation for the essential skills of historical inquiry they will need to complete their reading and succeed in the course.
• New “Practicing Historical Inquiry” features in every chapter pair two carefully annotated selections of primary material—including images, documents, historical maps, and data—related to the chapter’s Guiding Question. The features scaffold the process of evaluating diverse types of historical evidence, with an interactive learning experience in the Norton Illumine Ebook.
• A new Primary and Secondary Source Collection ebook provides hundreds of extra sources for reading, analysis, and instructor assignment.
• A new History Skills Tutorial on AI literacy helps students develop a basic understanding of how generative AI works, the technology’s limitations in historical work, and how to think critically about the output AI creates. The activity gives instructors—regardless of where they stand on AI—an easy-to-assign resource for cultivating student critical thinking.