What can reading 5,000 pages about a single family teach us about America?
This was the question posed by New York Times opinion columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Carlos Lozada ’93 at the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good’s 2026 Spring Lecture. Lozada currently serves as Professor of the Practice for Public Engagement at the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good and has spent his career as a newspaper editor and writer.
On April 20, listeners came from across campus to the Morris Inn to attend Lozada’s public lecture—co-sponsored by the University’s Ethics Initiative and Democracy Initiative—titled “America at 250: How Should We Think of Ourselves?”
To answer this question, Lozada turned to a series of books published in anticipation of the American bicentennial in 1976: The Kent Family Chronicles. The series was written by author John Jakes between 1974 and 1979 and was originally marketed as “the American Bicentennial Series.” Lozada picked up the first book in the series as a teen in the mid-1980’s and was immediately hooked.
“They offered me a romanticized and tantalizing history of the United States,” said Lozada, “One that appealed to my sense of adventure, of right and wrong, of longing for a country that was not yet fully mine.”
Lozada was born in Peru, and his family migrated to the United States when he was young. About 10 years later, Lozada’s family moved back to Peru where he completed middle school and high school before returning to the United States as a student at the University of Notre Dame. Now, as the United States of America approaches its 250th anniversary on July 4, 2026 (it’s “semiquincentennial,” as Lozada noted), Lozada found himself returning to these books to see what they might offer for a new moment of American introspection.
The Kent Family Chronicles begin with Philip Kent, a Frenchman who emigrates to America just as revolution is stirring in the colonies. The series follows the family through many generations spanning from the revolutionary era to the end of the 19th century. Throughout the series, the Kents rub shoulders with just about every giant of American history and are active participants in the making of that history. Philip throws tea into the Boston Harbor. His descendents survive the Alamo, smuggle Virginia slaves to freedom, and escape the great Chicago fire.
As Lozada noted, the series, with book titles such as The Bastard, The Rebels, and The Lawless is rich with American history, but also sensational. “The Kents embodied the stories that America loves to tell about itself,” explained Lozada. “Every ideal we’ve claimed about liberty and self-government, every motto we’ve echoed about opportunity and equality and exceptionalism. I think this is why the books were so compelling to me for so long. They validated the notion of America as an idea—a worthwhile idea.”
Lozada went on to explain how the series makes clear the enduring hard work that is necessary to build up the emerging nation at every turn. “On its own, the American idea gets you only partial credit,” said Lozada. “America is also a choice. A hard one. In fact, if I were forced to say how we should think of ourselves, it would be, in fact, as a constant, arduous choice. America is never settled.”
Throughout the series, the Kents, intertwined as they are with the punctuating moments of American history, wrestle with many of the same hard choices that the burgeoning country faced. In a land filled with immigrants, the Kents sometimes welcome and sometimes abuse these newcomers. In a land of opportunity, the Kents weigh the allure of amassing great wealth with their duties to their neighbors. And as the North and South begin to divide over the question of slavery, the Kent family too is pulled apart.
So what can reading 5,000 pages about a single, fictional family teach us about America? Perhaps that as much as it is a place, or even a set of ideals, America is a choice—one that must continue to be made in each new generation.
“We aren’t the land of opportunity, or the nation of immigrants, or equal before the law, just because that’s what we say we are,” Lozada said. “We become those things, we remain those things, only if we strive for them without ceasing, and even then, nothing is guaranteed.”