In conversation with Ben Tumin of Skipped History, Norton historians discuss the defining stories of U.S. history over the past 250 years by answering five questions. Below are their conversations in full.

An introduction from Ben Tumin:

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and professor of law at Harvard Law School. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her many books include We the People: A History of the Constitution; If/Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future; The Deadline: Essays; This America: The Case for the Nation; and These Truths: A History of the United States and These Truths Inquiry Edition for students. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Eric Foner's indelible works include the landmark history, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution; a best-selling study of Lincoln and slavery, The Fiery Trial, winner of the Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Lincoln Prizes, and an influential history of the Reconstruction amendments, The Second Founding, and The Story of American Freedom which was turned into the number 1 best-selling U.S. history textbook Give Me Liberty!: An American History. The DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University, Foner continues to write frequently for The Nation and other publications, and his latest book with Norton is Our Fragile Freedoms: Essays.

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. Her books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hemingses of Monticello, On Juneteenth, and "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs": Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination with Peter S. Onuf. She lives in New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Edward J. Larson is the author of many acclaimed works of history, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning account of the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods, a study of liberty and slavery at the founding, American Inheritance, and most recently Declaring Independence: Why 1776 Matters. A chaired professor of history and law at Pepperdine University, Larson lives with his family near Los Angeles.

Alan Taylor, twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history, is the author of American Revolutions, American Republics, and American Civil Wars, volumes in his acclaimed continental history of the United States, as well as Thomas Jefferson’s Education. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Justene Hill Edwards is an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia. Her books include Savings and Trust: The Rise and Fall of the Freedman’s Bank and a forthcoming Norton Short on the history of inequality in America. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.