Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ‘41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and chair of Harvard’s History and Literature Program. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker . Her most recent book, New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan (Knopf, 2005), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History; winner of the New York City Book Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Award; and an ALA Notable Book. She is also co-author with Jane Kamensky of the novel, Blindspot (Spiegel and Grau, 2008). Photo courtesy of Nina Subin.