January 6 and the Politics of History

On January 6, 2021, more than two thousand rioters stormed the doors of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., hoping to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power from former president Donald Trump to his successor, Joseph Biden. The deaths, property damage, and vicious rampage that ensued were witnessed on live television as an unprecedented attack on the democratic process and those who strive to protect it. As an installment of UGA Press’s History in the Headlines series, this book offers a rich discussion between highly respected scholars on the historical backdrop and context for contemporary issues from the headlines. In addition to the historical context, this conversation demonstrates how historians speak to one another about contentious topics and how they contribute in meaningful ways to the public’s understanding of momentous events. This volume focuses on the historical context of the January 6 attack and employs a free-flowing conversation style that allows the historians a more unconventional format. The participants discuss if—and if so, how—historians should engage in public debates and what that engagement means to their roles as academic authorities in the public.https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1196/thumbnail.jp

Replication data for: New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan

This database contains demographic information about the City of New York in the 1730s and 1740s. I compiled this data for my research into an alleged slave rebellion in 1741. Data in this dataverse is largely taken from the legal proceedings, especially Daniel Horsmanden's JOURNAL OF THE PROCEEDINGS, published in 1744. For more information about the data, please see the various appendices published at the end of my book NEW YORK BURNING, and also on this website. Appendix A is a summary of the data, and of my research methods

the Story of America: essays on origin

In his book, Jill Lepore investigates American origin stories--from John Smith's account of the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural address--to show how American democracy is bound up with the history of print. This book also excavates the origins of everything from the paper ballot and the Constitution to the I.O.U. and the dictionary. Along the way it presents fresh readings of Benjamin Franklin's Way to Wealth, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe, and "Paul Revere's Ride" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, as well as histories of lesser-known genres, including biographies of presidents, novels of immigrants, and accounts of the Depression