Jill Lepore's reading list for America's 250th birthday

A historian’s reading guide for the semiquincentennial

As the United States marks its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has offered a public roadmap for how to read — and think — about the moment. On The New York Times Book Review podcast, host Gilbert Cruz introduced Lepore as a guest whose recent Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “We the People — A History of the US Constitution,” has positioned her at the center of national conversations about American memory.

Cruz noted that Lepore, “like many in her field, has spent a lot of time over the last year thinking about the semiquincentennial and what it means to look back at American history at this complicated moment.” The interview, recorded for a July 4 holiday episode, framed Lepore’s recommendations less as a conventional beach-reading list and more as an invitation to grapple with the contradictions baked into past Independence Day celebrations.

Why 1976 still matters

Lepore used the bicentennial as a comparison point, drawing on archival research she published in The New Yorker. She described the 1976 celebration as “your usual July 4, but kind of on steroids,” with expanded historical reenactments, larger parades, and a flood of branded merchandise — including “bicentennial 7 Up” cans and what she called “bicentennial sanitary napkins” preserved in a Yale memorabilia collection.

The mood, she said, was marked by deep cynicism. While researching at the National Archives, Lepore found a 1974 National Park Service film in which ordinary Americans were asked what they thought of the bicentennial. “People were like, ah, what’s the difference between 199 years and 201? It’s just a year,” Lepore recalled. “What is there to celebrate? The economy is terrible. A lot of people said they felt left out of the country. So much division.”

That division played out publicly on the water. Lepore described how a replica ship crossing the Atlantic for a Boston reenactment of the Boston Tea Party was surrounded by rafts carrying protesters wearing Richard Nixon masks chanting “I am not a crook.” She also noted counter-protests organized by Gay American Revolution activists, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and Women for the Equal Rights Amendment. “The whole thing just nearly descended into utter political chaos,” Lepore said. “But in a way, it was also beautiful. I think actually, that’s the best of America. Like, here was a celebration of the nation that allows unfettered dissent.”

The mood going into 2026

Asked how the current moment compares, Lepore pointed to a project she undertook with The New Yorker Radio Hour and the organization Transom, which sent reporters across the country to repeat the National Park Service’s 1970s questions to Americans in 2026. The answers, she said, spanned the spectrum. Some respondents told interviewers, “this doesn’t feel like my country anymore, but we’re still having a barbecue,” while others expressed pride in the president and enthusiasm for televised coverage.

The exchange offered no tidy conclusion, and the podcast excerpt ends with Lepore quoting a 75-year-old woman from New Orleans whose full response was cut off in the available transcript. The incomplete remark, left dangling in the source material, suggests Lepore intended the woman’s words as an emotional capstone to the segment, though the substance of the comment was not included in the verified excerpt provided.

A wider 250th anniversary across the country

Lepore’s reading recommendations arrived as a wave of public events marked the anniversary. In New York Harbor, Sail4th 250 brought what organizers called “the largest-ever flotilla of tall ships” to the United States, CBS News New York reported. More than 100 tall ships and navy vessels from 20 countries converged on the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey. The main parade on July 4 began at 9:30 a.m., with 40 tall ships and 30 U.S. Navy vessels sailing from the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge past the Statue of Liberty to the George Washington Bridge and back.

Organizers predicted 8 to 10 million spectators would line the 15 miles of shoreline on both sides of the river, according to CBS News New York. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, welcomed crews at Sandy Hook and called the harbor “the gateway to America” and “a beacon for freedom welcoming immigrants.” An Indian Navy commanding officer, Nandoori Ravikanth, described the gathering as “a once in a lifetime opportunity” for his trainees traveling across the ocean.

The tall ships remained docked in New York for public viewing through July 7. On July 8, four of the five sister ships still in service — USCGC Eagle (United States), Sagres (Portugal), Mircea (Romania), and Gorch Fock (Germany) — were scheduled to race to Boston to compete for the Five Sisters Cup for the first time since the bicentennial. CBS News New York identified the Oosterschelde, a 164-foot three-masted topsail schooner homeported in Rotterdam, Netherlands, as one of the participating vessels, alongside the 295-foot USCGC Eagle, homeported in New London, Connecticut.

A cosmic celebration from NASA

Beyond the terrestrial festivities, NASA marked the semiquincentennial by releasing a curated set of cosmic images dominated by red, white, and blue hues. Live Science reported on June 30, 2026, that the collection featured objects located between 11,000 light-years and 19 million light-years from Earth, including nebulae and galaxies whose emissions naturally fall within the patriotic color palette.

The timing of NASA’s release — days before Independence Day — aligned the federal space agency’s commemoration with the broader cultural calendar, alongside the maritime events in New York and the historical reflection advanced by Lepore and other scholars. Live Science freelance contributor Jamie Carter, a Cardiff-based astronomy journalist, covered the image collection as the site’s “Space Photo of the Week.”

What Lepore’s list signals about the moment

Taken together, Lepore’s podcast remarks suggest her recommended readings for the semiquincentennial are not aimed at reinforcing triumphalist national narratives but at interrogating them. Her emphasis on the 1976 bicentennial — a celebration she characterized as commercially saturated and politically fractured — is instructive. The bicentennial occurred in the aftermath of Watergate and during the final stages of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and Lepore’s archival reporting indicates that ordinary Americans in 1974 already expressed ambivalence about what the upcoming anniversary would mean.

By drawing that parallel, Lepore implicitly argues that the tensions visible in 2026 — visible in the range of responses her Transom reporters collected — are not novel. The full title list of books Lepore discussed on the podcast was not included in the verified excerpts available, limiting what can be reported about her specific recommendations beyond the framing of the conversation.

How to follow the semiquincentennial year

Readers interested in Lepore’s broader perspective can track her continued contributions to The New Yorker and The New Yorker Radio Hour, where the Transom collaboration appeared. The Book Review podcast, hosted by Gilbert Cruz, indicated the July 4 episode also featured colleague Liz Egan’s summer beach reading recommendations, suggesting Lepore’s segment was positioned as a counterweight — history rather than escape.

For those attending the maritime events in person, CBS News New York noted that the National Park Service waived the $20 parking fee at Sandy Hook over the holiday weekend, and that the NYPD required security checkpoints, including bag checks and magnetometers, for spectators along Manhattan’s West Side Highway, which closed intermittently below 59th Street until about 2 p.m. The article was updated on July 5, 2026, at 10:14 a.m. EDT, indicating post-event revisions.

Context on Lepore’s Pulitzer

The Pulitzer Prize for “We the People” placed Lepore among a small group of historians whose work has reached broad public audiences. The book’s title echoes the opening of the U.S. Constitution’s preamble, and its subject — the document’s history and evolution — connects directly to ongoing debates about constitutional interpretation in American courts and legislatures. Cruz’s introduction on the podcast framed Lepore’s expertise as a resource for readers seeking to situate contemporary political conflicts within a longer historical arc, a framing consistent with her published essays in The New Yorker on national mythology and civic memory.

Sourcing note

This article draws on three primary sources: the July 3, 2026 episode of The New York Times Book Review podcast featuring Jill Lepore; CBS News New York’s reporting on Sail4th 250, last updated July 5, 2026; and Live Science’s June 30, 2026 coverage of NASA’s anniversary image release. Some details from the podcast transcript — including Lepore’s complete list of book recommendations and the full quote from the 75-year-old New Orleans respondent — were not contained in the verified excerpts available and therefore could not be reported in full. Where the sources differ in emphasis, the article notes those distinctions: Lepore focused on historical reflection and public dissent, CBS News New York emphasized the scale and logistics of the maritime celebration, and Live Science highlighted the astronomical dimensions of the commemoration.