A Nation So Conceived

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Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700633928
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis A Nation So Conceived by : Michael P. Zuckert

Download or read book A Nation So Conceived written by Michael P. Zuckert and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The culmination of years of work on Abraham Lincoln’s political thought, Michael P. Zuckert’s A Nation So Conceived argues for a coherent center to Lincoln’s political ideology, a core idea that unifies his thought and thus illuminates his deeds as a political actor. That core idea is captured in the term “democratic sovereignty.” Zuckert provides invaluable guidance to understanding both Lincoln and the politics of the United States between 185 and Lincoln’s death in 1865 by focusing on roughly a dozen speeches that Lincoln made during his career. This reader-friendly chronological organization is motivated by Zuckert’s emphasis on Lincoln as a practical politician who was always fully aware of the political context of the moment within which he was speaking. According to Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg, America was new precisely because it was born in dedication to the first premise of the theory of democratic sovereignty: that all men are created equal. Lincoln’s thought consisted in an ever-deepening meditation on the grounds and implications of that proposition, both in its constructive and in its destructive potential. The goodness of the American regime is derived from that ground and the chief dangers to the regime emanate from the same soil. Covering all significant speeches and writings of Lincoln both in his pre-presidential and presidential days, A Nation So Conceived is devoted to exploring the paradoxical duality of “created equal.” In a nearly comprehensive study of Lincoln’s thought, Zuckert uses lessons he learned from decades of teaching to reveal how Lincoln understood both its truth and its pathological consequences while offering an assessment of his aims and achievements as a statesman.

The Gettysburg Address

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Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 0141956631
Total Pages : 114 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (419 download)

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Book Synopsis The Gettysburg Address by : Abraham Lincoln

Download or read book The Gettysburg Address written by Abraham Lincoln and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Address was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, during the American Civil War, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg. In just over two minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom" that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, and that would also create a unified nation in which states' rights were no longer dominant. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Lincoln at Gettysburg

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439126453
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Lincoln at Gettysburg by : Garry Wills

Download or read book Lincoln at Gettysburg written by Garry Wills and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The power of words has rarely been given a more compelling demonstration than in the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln was asked to memorialize the gruesome battle. Instead, he gave the whole nation "a new birth of freedom" in the space of a mere 272 words. His entire life and previous training, and his deep political experience went into this, his revolutionary masterpiece. By examining both the address and Lincoln in their historical moment and cultural frame, Wills breathes new life into words we thought we knew, and reveals much about a president so mythologized but often misunderstood. Wills shows how Lincoln came to change the world and to effect an intellectual revolution, how his words had to and did complete the work of the guns, and how Lincoln wove a spell that has not yet been broken.

Writing the Gettysburg Address

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Publisher : University Press of Kansas
ISBN 13 : 0700621121
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Writing the Gettysburg Address by : Martin P. Johnson

Download or read book Writing the Gettysburg Address written by Martin P. Johnson and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four score and seven years ago . . . . Are any six words better known, of greater import, or from a more crucial moment in our nation’s history? And yet after 150 years the dramatic and surprising story of how Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address has never been fully told. Until now. Martin Johnson's remarkable work of historical and literary detection illuminates a speech, a man, and a moment in history that we thought we knew. Johnson guides readers on Lincoln’s emotional and intellectual journey to the speaker’s platform, revealing that Lincoln himself experienced writing the Gettysburg Address as an eventful process that was filled with the possibility of failure, but which he knew resulted finally in success beyond expectation. We listen as Lincoln talks with the cemetery designer about the ideals and aspirations behind the unprecedented cemetery project, look over Lincoln's shoulder as he rethinks and rewrites his speech on the very morning of the ceremony, and share his anxiety that he might not live up to the occasion. And then, at last, we stand with Lincoln at Gettysburg, when he created the words and image of an enduring and authentic legend. Writing the Gettysburg Address resolves the puzzles and problems that have shrouded the composition of Lincoln's most admired speech in mystery for fifteen decades. Johnson shows when Lincoln first started his speech, reveals the state of the document Lincoln brought to Gettysburg, traces the origin of the false story that Lincoln wrote his speech on the train, identifies the manuscript Lincoln held while speaking, and presents a new method for deciding what Lincoln’s audience actually heard him say. Ultimately, Johnson shows that the Gettysburg Address was a speech that grew and changed with each step of Lincoln's eventful journey to the podium. His two-minute speech made the battlefield and the cemetery into landmarks of the American imagination, but it was Lincoln’s own journey to Gettysburg that made the Gettysburg Address.

Abraham Lincoln's Speeches

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 400 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (321 download)

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Book Synopsis Abraham Lincoln's Speeches by : Abraham Lincoln

Download or read book Abraham Lincoln's Speeches written by Abraham Lincoln and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Conceiving a Nation

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Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271048069
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Conceiving a Nation by : Mira Morgenstern

Download or read book Conceiving a Nation written by Mira Morgenstern and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Natural Rights and the New Republicanism

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400821525
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Natural Rights and the New Republicanism by : Michael P. Zuckert

Download or read book Natural Rights and the New Republicanism written by Michael P. Zuckert and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, Michael Zuckert proposes a new view of the political philosophy that lay behind the founding of the United States. In a book that will interest political scientists, historians, and philosophers, Zuckert looks at the Whig or opposition tradition as it developed in England. He argues that there were, in fact, three opposition traditions: Protestant, Grotian, and Lockean. Before the English Civil War the opposition was inspired by the effort to find the "one true Protestant politics--an effort that was seen to be a failure by the end of the Interregnum period. The Restoration saw the emergence of the Whigs, who sought a way to ground politics free from the sectarian theological-scriptural conflicts of the previous period. The Whigs were particularly influenced by the Dutch natural law philosopher Hugo Grotius. However, as Zuckert shows, by the mid-eighteenth century John Locke had replaced Grotius as the philosopher of the Whigs. Zuckert's analysis concludes with a penetrating examination of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, the English "Cato," who, he argues, brought together Lockean political philosophy and pre-existing Whig political science into a new and powerful synthesis. Although it has been misleadingly presented as a separate "classical republican" tradition in recent scholarly discussions, it is this "new republicanism" that served as the philosophical point of departure for the founders of the American republic.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

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Author :
Publisher : Albert Whitman & Company
ISBN 13 : 0807545511
Total Pages : 53 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (75 download)

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Book Synopsis Lincoln's Gettysburg Address by : Abraham Lincoln

Download or read book Lincoln's Gettysburg Address written by Abraham Lincoln and published by Albert Whitman & Company. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lincoln's original Gettysburg Address speech accompanied by lush mural illustrations with a new introduction. The Gettysburg Address is one of the most influential speeches in our history, written by Abraham Lincoln at a crucial period in his presidency and in United States history. Caldecott Honoree and Newbery Medalist James Daugherty's pictorial interpretation of President Abraham Lincoln's famous speech, the Gettysburg Address, was originally published by Albert Whitman in 1947. This book is available again in a fresh new edition just in time for the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address with a new introduction by Lincoln- and Civil War-scholar Gabor S. Boritt.

The Gettysburg Address

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Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781985384088
Total Pages : 96 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis The Gettysburg Address by : Charles River Charles River Editors

Download or read book The Gettysburg Address written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the speech and reactions written by people who were there *Discusses the influences on the speech and debates over the various versions that exist *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live." - Abraham Lincoln Without question, the most famous battle of the American Civil War took place outside of the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which happened to be a transportation hub, serving as the center of a wheel with several roads leading out to other Pennsylvanian towns. From July 1-3, Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia tried everything in its power to decisively defeat George Meade's Union Army of the Potomac, unleashing ferocious assaults that inflicted nearly 50,000 casualties in all. When a crowd came to Gettysburg in November 1863 to commemorate the battle fought there 4 months earlier and dedicate a new national cemetery, they came to hear a series of speeches about the Civil War and the events of that battle. Today it may seem obvious to invite the president to such an occasion, but Lincoln was initially an afterthought, and though he did come to deliver remarks, he was not in fact the keynote speaker. Instead, the man chosen to give the keynote speech was Edward Everett, a politician and educator from Massachusetts. Everett had already been a Congressman, the 15th Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, and Secretary of State, and by the Civil War, he was considered perhaps the greatest orator in the nation, making him a natural choice to be the featured speaker at the dedication ceremony. Everett is still known today for his oratory, but more for the fact that he spoke for over two hours at Gettysburg immediately before President Lincoln delivered his immortal two-minute Gettysburg Address. Everett would later say, "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes." At the time, however, Lincoln and many others present at the event thought his speech fell flat and was ultimately a failure that would be consigned to the dustbin of history. Perhaps Lincoln's most impressive feat is that he was able to convey so much with so few words; after Everett spoke for hours at Gettysburg, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address only took a few minutes, but in those few minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence. In the process, he redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union but as "a new birth of freedom" that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, ensure that democracy would remain a viable form of government, and would also create a unified nation in which states' rights were no longer dominant. 150 years later, Lincoln's speech is still considered arguably the greatest in American history, yet the exact wording of the speech is disputed. The five known manuscripts of the Gettysburg Address differ in a number of details and also differ from contemporary newspaper reprints of the speech. In fact, at the time, few Americans knew the president had even given a speech at Gettysburg, and the Gettysburg Address was not widely covered in newspapers. The irony is lost on few, given that the Gettysburg Address continues to represent a concise and eloquent statement on the very purpose of the United States.

Lincoln in American Memory

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198023049
Total Pages : 493 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis Lincoln in American Memory by : Merrill D. Peterson

Download or read book Lincoln in American Memory written by Merrill D. Peterson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1995-06-01 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lincoln's death, like his life, was an event of epic proportions. When the president was struck down at his moment of triumph, writes Merrill Peterson, "sorrow--indescribable sorrow" swept the nation. After lying in state in Washington, Lincoln's body was carried by a special funeral train to Springfield, Illinois, stopping in major cities along the way; perhaps a million people viewed the remains as memorial orations rang out and the world chorused its sincere condolences. It was the apotheosis of the martyred President--the beginning of the transformation of a man into a mythic hero. In Lincoln in American Memory, historian Merrill Peterson provides a fascinating history of Lincoln's place in the American imagination from the hour of his death to the present. In tracing the changing image of Lincoln through time, this wide-ranging account offers insight into the evolution and struggles of American politics and society--and into the character of Lincoln himself. Westerners, Easterners, even Southerners were caught up in the idealization of the late President, reshaping his memory and laying claim to his mantle, as his widow, son, memorial builders, and memorabilia collectors fought over his visible legacy. Peterson also looks at the complex responses of blacks to the memory of Lincoln, as they moved from exultation at the end of slavery to the harsh reality of free life amid deep poverty and segregation; at more than one memorial event for the great emancipator, the author notes, blacks were excluded. He makes an engaging examination of the flood of reminiscences and biographies, from Lincoln's old law partner William H. Herndon to Carl Sandburg and beyond. Serious historians were late in coming to the topic; for decades the myth-makers sought to shape the image of the hero President to suit their own agendas. He was made a voice of prohibition, a saloon-keeper, an infidel, a devout Christian, the first Bull Moose Progressive, a military blunderer and (after the First World War) a military genius, a white supremacist (according to D.W. Griffith and other Southern admirers), and a touchstone for the civil rights movement. Through it all, Peterson traces five principal images of Lincoln: the savior of the Union, the great emancipator, man of the people, first American, and self-made man. In identifying these archetypes, he tells us much not only of Lincoln but of our own identity as a people.

So Conceived and So Dedicated

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Publisher : Fordham University Press
ISBN 13 : 0823264505
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (232 download)

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Book Synopsis So Conceived and So Dedicated by : Lorien Foote

Download or read book So Conceived and So Dedicated written by Lorien Foote and published by Fordham University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlighting recent and new directions in contemporary research in the field, So Conceived and So Dedicated offers a complete and updated picture of intellectual life in the Civil War–era Union. Compiling essays from both established and young historians, this volume addresses the role intellectuals played in framing the conflict and implementing their vision of a victorious Union. Broadly defining “intellectuals” to encompass doctors, lawyers, sketch artists, college professors, health reformers, and religious leaders, the essays address how these thinkers disseminated their ideas, sometimes using commercial or popular venues and organizations to implement what they believed. Offering a vast range of perspectives on how northerners thought about,experienced, and responded to the Civil War, So Conceived and So Dedicated is organized around three questions: To what extent did educated Americans believe that the Civil War exposed the failure of old ideas? Did the Civil War promote new strains of authoritarianism in northern intellectual life or did the war reinforce democratic individualism? How did the Civil War affect northerners’ conception of nationalism and their understanding of their relationship to the state? Essays explore myriad topics, including: how antebellum ideas about the environment and the body influenced conceptions of democratic health; how leaders of the Irish American community reconciled their support of the United States and the Republican Party with their allegiances to Ireland and their fellow Irish immigrants; how intellectual leaders of the northern African American community explained secession, civil war, and emancipation; the influence of southern ideals on northern intellectuals; wartime and postwar views from college and university campuses; the ideological acrobatics that professors at midwestern universities had to perform in order to keep their students from leaving the classroom; and how northern sketch artists helped influence the changing perceptions of African American soldiers over the course of the war. Collectively, So Conceived and So Dedicated offers relevant and fruitful answers to the nation’s intellectual history and suggests that antebellum modes of thinking remained vital and tenacious well after the Civil War.

The Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln

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Publisher : Pearson College Division
ISBN 13 : 9780023264207
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (642 download)

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Book Synopsis The Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln by : Abraham Lincoln

Download or read book The Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln written by Abraham Lincoln and published by Pearson College Division. This book was released on 1967-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

In Lincoln's Hand

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Publisher : Bantam
ISBN 13 : 0553807420
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (538 download)

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Book Synopsis In Lincoln's Hand by : Abraham Lincoln

Download or read book In Lincoln's Hand written by Abraham Lincoln and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2009 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of writings includes images of a variety of handwritten speeches, letters, and childhood notebooks, accompanied by commentary by James M. McPherson, Ken Burns, Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Updike, Toni Morrison, and other notables.

At the Precipice

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Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807833924
Total Pages : 391 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis At the Precipice by : Shearer Davis Bowman

Download or read book At the Precipice written by Shearer Davis Bowman and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bowman explores the different ways in which Americans, North and South, black and white, understood their interests, rights, and honor during the secession period. He examines the lives and thoughts of key figures and provides an especially vivid glimpse into what less famous men and women in both sections thought about themselves and the worlds in which they lived, and how their thoughts informed their actions during this time. Both sides glorified the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, yet they interpreted those sacred documents in markedly different ways and held very different notions of what constituted "American" values.

What Lincoln Believed

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Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0307430162
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis What Lincoln Believed by : Michael Lind

Download or read book What Lincoln Believed written by Michael Lind and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Countless books have been written about Abraham Lincoln, yet few historians and biographers have taken Lincoln seriously as a thinker or attempted to place him in the context of major intellectual traditions. In this refreshing, brilliantly argued portrait, Michael Lind examines the ideas and beliefs that guided Lincoln as a statesman and shaped the United States in its time of great crisis.In a century in which revolutions against monarchy and dictatorship in Europe and Latin America had failed, Lincoln believed that liberal democracy must be defended for the good of the world. During an age in which many argued that only whites were capable of republican government, Lincoln insisted on the universality of human rights and the potential for democracy everywhere. Yet he also held many of the prejudices of his time; his opposition to slavery was rooted in his allegiance to the ideals of the American Revolution, not support for racial equality. Challenging popular myths and capturing Lincoln’s strengths and flaws, Lind offers fascinating and revelatory insights that deepen our understanding of this great and complicated man.

What So Proudly We Hail

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Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1610170806
Total Pages : 818 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis What So Proudly We Hail by : Amy A. Kass

Download or read book What So Proudly We Hail written by Amy A. Kass and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-07-15 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A stupendous compilation of the best things said by and to Americans . . . [I] open it every night at random and always find something valuable." —Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal "Indispensable . . . Should become The Book of Virtues for patriots." —Mona Charen, nationally syndicated columnist Concerned about rising cynicism and apathy, more and more Americans lament the decline in patriotic feeling and civic engagement. Fortunately, this wonderfully rich anthology is here to help all Americans realize more deeply—and appreciate more fully—who they are as citizens of the United States.At once inspiring and thought provoking, What So Proudly We Hail explores American identity, character, and civic life using the soul-shaping power of story, speech, and song. Editors Amy Kass, Leon Kass, and Diana Schaub—acclaimed scholars who among them have more than a century of teaching experience—have assembled dozens of selections by our country's greatest writers and leaders, from Mark Twain to John Updike, from George Washington to Theodore Roosevelt, from Willa Cather to Flannery O'Connor, from Benjamin Franklin to Martin Luther King Jr., from Francis Scott Key to Irving Berlin.Featuring the editors' insightful and instructive commentary, What So Proudly We Hail illuminates our national identity, the American creed, the American character, and the virtues and aspirations of active citizenship. This marvelous book will spark much-needed discussion and reflection in living rooms, classrooms, and reading groups everywhere.

The Lincoln Highway

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0735222363
Total Pages : 593 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (352 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lincoln Highway by : Amor Towles

Download or read book The Lincoln Highway written by Amor Towles and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-03-21 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.” —Bill Gates “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” —NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. “Once again, I was wowed by Towles’s writing—especially because The Lincoln Highway is so different from A Gentleman in Moscow in terms of setting, plot, and themes. Towles is not a one-trick pony. Like all the best storytellers, he has range. He takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway. But, he suggests, when something (or someone) tries to steer us off course, it is possible to take the wheel.” – Bill Gates