THE DEADLINE

Shrewd perspectives on a tumultuous decade.

In intellectually rigorous essays lightened with “domestic metaphors” and “maternal asides,” historian Lepore brings her vibrant curiosity and wide-ranging erudition to a host of topics, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Barbie and Bratz dolls, bicycles, VW buses, and Moby-Dick. While most essays appeared over the past 10 years in the New Yorker, where Lepore is a staff writer, two have never been published: “The Everyman Library,” which pays homage to her father and grandfather; and “The Return of the Pervert,” from 2018, in which Lepore critiques the narrowness of the #MeToo movement. Many essays reverberate far beyond the events that inspired them. For example, “Battleground America,” from 2012, begins with a school shooting in Ohio and expands to consider the history of the Second Amendment, the murder of Trayvon Martin, the National Rifle Association’s rise and vociferous interpretation of the meaning of an armed militia, and the organization’s moneyed lobbying of politicians, which has repeatedly thwarted gun safety legislation. “When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left,” writes the author. Sprightly essays on technology are informed by firsthand reporting and deep research: Lepore chronicles her visit to the Internet Archive in San Francisco while putting the trend for disruption (“everyone is either disrupting or being disrupted”) in historical context and tamping down the fear of a robot invasion. “Panic is not evidence of danger,” she calmly notes; “it’s evidence of panic.” The moving title essay is an elegy to a dear friend whose life, and untimely death from leukemia, led to Lepore’s becoming a writer. “All historians are coroners,” she remarks, explaining her deft dissection of past lives, but not all bring to their writing Lepore’s grace, precision, and deep humanity.

A noteworthy collection from an indispensable writer and thinker.