Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and Affiliate Professor of Law at Harvard University. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker, and host of the podcast, The Last Archive. Her many books include, These Truths: A History of the United States (2018), an international bestseller, named one of Time magazine's top ten non-fiction books of the decade. Her most recent book, IF THEN: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future, has been longlisted for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Book Award.
Jill Lepore received a BA in English from Tufts University (1987), an MA in American Culture from the University of Michigan (1990), and a PhD in American Studies from Yale University in 1995. She joined the Harvard History Department in 2003 and was Chair of the History and Literature Program in 2005-10, 2012, and 2014. In 2012, she was named Harvard College Professor, in recognition of distinction in undergraduate teaching.
Lepore has also been contributing to The New Yorker magazine since 2005, writing about American history, law, literature, and politics. Her essays and reviews have also appeared in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Journal of American History, Foreign Affairs, the Yale Law Journal, American Scholar, and the American Quarterly.
Lepore is the recipient of many honors, awards, and honorary degrees, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award; the National Magazine Award; and, twice, for the Pulitzer Prize. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the American Philosophical Society. Her research has been funded by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the Charles Warren Center, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Lepore has lectured widely and is past president of the Society of American Historians. Among her many interviews, she has appeared on major national and international radio and television networks and programs including on NPR's Fresh Air and the Colbert Report.
Lepore lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and their three sons.
