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 | From Erik Wander, your About Books & Literature Editor There will be plenty of fireworks displays, parades, barbecues, music and other forms of revelry to choose from on July 4, 2013, but what About Books & Literature wants to know is this: just what is it readers read to get themselves into the 4th of July spirit? "The 4th," or Independence Day if you prefer, is about the birth of our country, the Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers and the American Revolution, among other things. And our recommendations for this week reflect that. | |
David McCullough, '1776'
"The author worked with more than seventy diaries and several thousand letters to piece together his historical tale, and chooses to let many of the participants speak for themselves through the words they left behind," writes our Genealogy guide of this bestseller about the year America traces its independence to (and Americans commemorate on July 4). The American Revolution "comes to life," she says, in this meticulously researched book focused on the events that led up to the war.
| Thomas Paine's Greatest Hits
Thomas Paine wrote some of the most influential pamphlets of the Revolutionary War era. It was the activist, philosopher and revolutionary Paine who penned the immortal words, "These are the times that try men's souls," the opening line of "The American Crisis," or simply "The Crisis," which Paine started during the early days of the Revolution at a time when the colonists needed more than just a bit of a morale boost. Find out what other "common sense" Paine had to offer those who fought for, and ultimately won, America's independence.
| In Celebration of America, Books for Kids
The U.S. Constitution, a children's cookbook, a little poetry, the White House, an illustrated version of "America the Beautiful" and the Statue of Liberty are just some of the things you'll find on this list of books recommended by our Children's Books guide. "Celebrate being an American on the Fourth of July, Constitution Day, Citizenship Day, and other special days, but don't stop there," she says, adding that being an American is something worth celebrating "year-round." Find out more about 11 such books written for younger children up to middle schoolers.
| American Poetry for the 4th of July
"Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,/Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" So wrote Emma Lazarus in an 1883 sonnet that ended up engraved on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty. "The New Colossus" is among the poems on this list that also includes verse about America by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg and others.
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