Much of the book is devoted to describing how nonwhites and disfavored European immigrant groups in previous generations were excluded by illiberal nationalists both from the polity and from mainstream accounts of American history. In “This America,” Lepore defends a version of civic patriotism against the three alternatives: illiberal nationalism, identity politics and liberal nationalism.

On the thin side of the circle are found both liberal nationalism, which is nonracist, and “civic patriotism,” or what the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas calls “constitutional patriotism,” which is nonnational. On the side of thick identity are found both illiberal nationalism and illiberal multiculturalism or identity politics, which in different ways privilege descent-based communities above a common cultural or civic identity shared by citizens of a democracy. The definition of the nation, and its relation to the state, can be pictured as a circle, with “thick” versions of identity on one side and “thin” versions on the other.

Instead, it eats liberalism.” Purging American identity of nationalism and refounding it on a purified liberalism is her purpose in this brief but ambitious book, based on essays in Foreign Affairs and The New Yorker. Toward the beginning of “This America: The Case for the Nation,” Jill Lepore, a professor of history at Harvard and a staff writer for The New Yorker, says: “When serious historians abandon the study of the nation, when scholars stop trying to write a common history for a people, nationalism doesn’t die. THIS AMERICA The Case for the Nation By Jill Lepore

Jill lepore this america