“... nations define themselves by their differences, even when they have to invent them; that's part of what makes them nations. The world hasn't always been divided into nations, and there's no reason to believe it always will be, not least because the most pressing problem confronting the world—climate change—is planetary. It's possible to imagine a world without nations.“

“... when scholars stopped writing national history, other, less scrupulous people stepped in. Nations, to make sense of themselves, need some kind of agreed-upon past.“

Lepore's This America is a short, powerful, scholarly take on the current rise of nationalism. She critiques historian's absence from researching and writing about the scourge of nationalism and calls on them now to re-engage, a time when we most need them.

“At its core, surveillance capitalism is parasitic and self-referential. It revises Karl Marx's old image of capitalism as a vampire that feeds on labor, but with an unexpected turn. Instead of labor, surveillance capitalism feeds on every aspect of every human's experience.“

An exceptionally important read on a topic that affects anyone with a smartphone and/or users on the internet. Highly recommended.