Posted on 04/08/2018 3:39:59 PM PDT by iowamark
A friend recently posed this question: “If you had to recommend one book for a first-time visitor to the U.S. to read, to understand our country, what would it be and why?”...
If the goal is an education, we could recommend Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager’s Growth of the American Republic, a two-volume history that used to be required reading...
Huckleberry Finn may be the greatest American novel... But there is no single novel, no matter how great, that can do the job alone.
Consider instead the great American essayists who invented a new style of writing in the 1920s and founded The New Yorker. E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat is the finest such essay collection... Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel is nearly as great...
Teddy Roosevelt’s short book The Strenuous Life, which opens with his 1899 speech by that name, is an explanation of America’s view of itself — a view that greatly shaped the 20th century. It was the peculiar marriage of power and prosperity together with a sense of moral urgency. Roosevelt demands an active life, a life of struggling for personal and national virtue. He commends a triad of strength in body, intellect, and character — of which character is the most important. America must meet its moral obligations vigorously, he tells us: “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”...
The origin of that moral urgency was America’s most important spiritual crisis. It is best expressed in a single speech, rich in Biblical imagery and contemporary prophecy: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which is the greatest of all American writing. It is a tone-poem or photograph of the American soul. A complete understanding, in just 697 words.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Well, in LA, they mostly read LA OPINION.
An eye chart, based on the way they drive.
Centennial
That is a beautiful photo, in so many different ways. And very American!
Oops. my prior reply was for you.
"The Adventures of Isabel" by Ogden Nash.
The Declaration of Independence.
America’s break-up letter with Britain.
The Art of the Deal:)
Democracy in America, de Tocqueville.
How to win friends and influence people.
Dale Carnegie.
IF you want to understand America and it’s special place in all of history read de Touqville
Up From Slavery
??? I can not imagine why Lincoln lied that some people wanted to destroy the union. The “union” would have continued on as it has, albeit without as many states. This is the Big Lie and the reason it was not a “civil” war. The southern states wanted only to be left alone and to go their own way. They wanted to “destroy” nothing.
Driving instructions.....AND REGULATIONS!
English.
Forever Amber.
rwood
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