From cradle to grave, through history
This is the latest installment in the Gazette’s summer series showcasing recent books by Harvard authors. It took a while for Jill Lepore to realize she was writing a full-blown book about the ways Americans view the stages of life. The evidence accumulated slowly: piles of notes and primary sources, essays she’d written here and there for The New Yorker on topics such as breast pumps and cryogenic freezing — even old board games of life, a newfound fascination. “I didn’t set out to write a book about life and death,” says Lepore, David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History. Then, with the arrival of a $6,000 overdue notice from Widener Library, came her expensive epiphany — the seemingly disparate books she’d been turning to in her research weren’t, actually. (Luckily, most of the fine was later forgiven.) “I realized, Oh, I guess everything I’m writing is related,” she recalls. “There’s a theme...