Jill Lepore

Stages of life are artifacts. Adolescence is a useful contrivance, midlife is a moving target, senior citizens are an interest group, and tweenhood is just plain made up.

The idea of progress - the notion that human history is the history of human betterment - dominated the world view of the West between the Enlightenment and the First World War.

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

If you have a block of ballistics gelatin and a high-speed camera, pretty soon somebody gets a gun!

When information is infinite, individual pieces of information are worth nothing.

Whoever grows angry amid troubles applies a drug worse than the disease and is a physician unskilled about misfortunes.