Jill Lepore is one of my favorite contemporary historians. History plays a big part in The Deadline: Essays (2023) but Lepore makes it clear that her attitude towards history is a little different. “I agreed with the heroine of Jane Austen’s Northhanger Abbey, when she complains about history, ‘It tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all–it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention.’ I have tried to write history differently.” (p. xviii)

As an example of Lepore’s writing history differently, take “The Man in the Box.” Lepore delivers a clever and informative essay about Doctor Who. “Doctor Who was the brainchild of Sydney Newman, a Canadian who became head of the BBC’s drama department in 1963. Newman, who had created The Avengers, for ITV, in 1961, was brought in to produce television that would meet the BBC’s remit as a government-owned broadcasting service as will as its need to win viewers from ITV, a commercial rival that had begun broadcasting in 1955. By 1960, the BBC had not a single program among the top ten ratings earners. Newman had an idea for something that could be both education and entertaining: science fiction.” (p. 152)

Jill Lepore goes on to explore the beginning of the program and the various Doctors who played the iconic role. But, Lepore doesn’t stop there. She reveals the origin story for the greatest villains The Doctor has to face: The Daleks. “The Daleks were invented by Terry Nation, who was born in Cardiff in 1930. …He took a job writing for Doctor Who in 1963. He once said that he got the name ‘Dalek’ from an encyclopedia volume that ran from ‘dal’ to ‘lek.’ …He invented a race of creatures mutated by an apocalyptic nuclear war who, in order to survive, live inside robotic shells and are so convinced of their own purity that their object is to exterminate every other race.” (p. 157)

Lepore’s essays deal with books and writers, politicians and voters, crises and triumphs. I read these essays with delight! If you’re in the mood for something different, give The Deadline a try. GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction — xvii

Part one

Prodigal daughter

Prodigal daughter — 1

The deadline — 17

Easy rider — 27

The Everyman library — 36

Part two

Misjudged

It’s still alive — 43

Ahab at home — 54

The fireman — 67

The shorebird — 78

Misjudged — 93

Part three

Valley of the dolls

The oddyssey — 111

The ice man — 121

Valley of the dolls — 137

The man in the box — 150

No, we cannot — 166

Buzz — 175

Part four

Just the facts, ma’am

Just the facts, ma’am –191

Bad news — 201

After the fact — 209

Hard news — 216

Part five

Battleground America

Battleground America — 235

Blood on the green — 255

The long blue line — 268

The riot report — 282

Part 6 

The disruption machine

The cobweb — 299

The disruption machine — 314

The robot caravan — 331

Mission impossible — 343

Part seven

The rule of history

The rule of history — 355

The age of consent — 367

Benched — 381

The dark ages — 395

Drafted — 407

Part eight

The parent trap

Back to the blackboard — 413

To have and to hold — 426

The return of the pervert — 440

The parent trap — 451

Part nine 

The isolation ward

Plague years — 467

These four walls — 478

The isolation ward — 488

Burned — 496

Part ten

In every dark hour

Politics and the new machine — 507

The war and the roses — 524

You’re fired — 541

The Trump papers — 554

In every dark hour — 571

The American beast — 583

Acknowledgements — 599

Index — 601