Jill Lepore

“Folklore used to be passed by word of mouth, from one generation to the next; that's what makes it folklore, as opposed to, say, history, which is written down and stored in an archive.”

“Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business...”

“Germ theory, which secularized infectious disease, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.”

“Secret government programs that pry into people's private affairs are bound up with ideas about secrecy and privacy that arose during the process by which the mysterious became secular.”

“Epidemiologists study patterns in order to combat infection. Stories about epidemics follow patterns, too. Stories aren't often deadly, but they can be virulent: spreading fast, weakening re...”

“Fox News's coverage of 9/11 and the war in Iraq improved its ratings, demonstrated its influence, and intensified the controversy over its practices.”

“The very first television ad targeted to women was produced by the Eisenhower-Nixon campaign in 1956. It includes footage of a woman supervising her children doing their homework at the kitc...”

“Mainly, the more faddish and newer stages of life are really just marketing schemes. Tweenhood. The young old. The quarter-life crisis.”

“Mainly, the more faddish and newer stages of life are really just marketing schemes. Tweenhood. The young old. The quarter-life crisis. You can sell a lot of junk to a lot of people by inven...”

“In the ancient world, taxes were paid in kind: landowners paid in crops or livestock; the landless paid with their labor. Taxing trade made medieval monarchs rich and funded the early-modern...”

“Few American presidents have been unhappier or lonelier in office than Woodrow Wilson.”

“Scientific management promised to replace rules of thumb with accurate measurements.”

“Accepting money from the federal government to conduct research places academic inquiry in the service of national interests.”

“In the nineteen-thirties, one in four Americans got their news from William Randolph Hearst, who lived in a castle and owned twenty-eight newspapers in nineteen cities.”

“Modern political science started in the late nineteenth century as a branch of history.”

“Clarence Darrow, America's best-known trial lawyer, was also one of American history's most skilled orators.”

“An ordinary life used to look something like this: born into a growing family, you help rear your siblings, have the first of your own half-dozen or even dozen children soon after you're gro...”

“I always just wanted to be a writer, not necessarily a particular kind of writer.”

“The stories about epidemics that are told in the American press - their plots and tropes - date to the nineteen-twenties, when modern research science, science journalism, and science fictio...”

“Political elites vote in a more partisan fashion than the mass public; this tendency, too, follows a curve. The more you know, the more likely you are to vote in an ideologically consistent...”