![]() ![]() ![]() George, of course, commanded the Continental Army that defeated Great Britain and then became the first president of the United States his immense popularity helped legitimize the government of the early republic. The parallel lives of Harry and George Washington illustrate the contradictions embedded in the nation’s story from birth. ![]() One group hopes to see America become great again the other claims that such golden age thinking is a fantasy of the privileged. No, insist most conservatives, it’s a narrative of individuals striving for liberty, who got stymied, at times, by meddlesome progressives and riotous radicals. It’s the story of a white man’s empire, many scholars on the left contend, against which dissenters of all races and genders have struggled to create a truly democratic society. ![]() And the argument a historian makes about America’s long, turbulent, and demographically complex past-from the arrival of the first European settlers in the sixteenth century to the triumph of Donald Trump-depends upon the story she chooses to tell. “To write history is to make an argument by telling a story,” Jill Lepore once explained. ![]()
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