These Truths: A History of the United States, by Jill Lepore (W.W. Norton, September 18)

Hardly the official story but not quite a people’s history, the New Yorker writer and Harvard historian’s sweeping and propulsive crash course zeroes in on the Declaration of Independence and its imperfect embodiment over the centuries. Lepore brings renewed focus to history’s sidelined — women, slaves — but also sneaks across partisan lines to find the places where ideals are perpetually fought over, often heroically defended, and sometimes betrayed — by everyone from slave-owners to campus demagogues to a President for whom no truth unflattering to him is self-evident.