Jill Lepore, _The Story of America: Essays on Origins_

THE TITLE IS misleading, suggesting as it does a comprehensive, continuous narrative of the history of the United States like that Lepore has just published, These Truths. Then again, there is little sense in titling a book A Collection of my New Yorker Pieces, Most of Which You Have Probably Already Read. When, when, when will I learn to check the copyright page before dashing to the checkout counter, brand new book by a favorite author in my perspiring hands, in a frenzy to part with $27.95?

Well, no harm done. Lepore's New Yorker essays (and the one from American Scholar) are brilliant, well worth re-reading, and I am happy to have them all here in one place, now that the New Yorkers in which they first appeared were recycled long, long ago.

The subtitle is quite accurate--would have made a great title, actually. Lepore is deft at uncovering origins, especially the origins of those things so familiar that they seem to have always been here exactly in the form we know them now, having emerged intact from the brow of history. Longfellow's poem about Paul Revere, bankruptcy laws, ballots, Charlie Chan--there's a story behind each, and Lepore knows not only how to find it but also how to tell it.

And I must add: brilliantly retro cover, which seems to have been whisked via time warp from some 1940s popular history, right down to the curvy little banner bearing the subtitle. Kudos, Karl Spurzem!