MixedLos Angeles Review of BooksLepore hopes, I think, for a nation in which liberal ideals can be secured without the baggage of cultural solidarity. But this may not work ... These Truths, sometimes reads like a textbook in which the political and intellectual history is left in, and the social and cultural history largely left out ... I’m not sure that this minimalism works. First, she marginalizes the agency of ordinary people, thus missing an opportunity to help citizens understand how they can make change in a democracy (a liberal goal). Second, nation-states are not parliamentary bodies ... in ways that perhaps Lepore does not want to admit, the nation must be more than a debate club.