I originally started These Truths - a survey of American history beginning in the 1500s leading all the way up to 2016 - to give myself context as we dived into yet another quarantine binge special: Men in Wigs, Talking. Wait, no. It was HBO’s John Adams. I had questions about the characters portrayed, like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin. Did Jefferson really refer to the institution of slavery as a “moral depravity”? After all, he owned a total of 600 enslaved people over his lifetime. It turns out he did say that, along with the infamous line “all men are created equal”. How could these words and actions belong to the same country, the same man? This question only led to more avenues of inquiry, and each chapter of These Truths provided a meandering path through the lives and times of the heroes, scoundrels, thinkers, and inventors that created this place. Over the course of the book, I came to understand that this nation, with all of its dark twists of fate, stirring tales of individuals overcoming epic odds, and cruel injustices has been gripped with existential questions and threats from its very outset. America is a land of possibility, often overshadowed by the contradictions with the edicts upon which it was founded. And whether we live up to the promises it was born by is a continually renewed question.