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Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America
"Americans need periodic reminding that they are, to a great extent, people of the book -- or, rather, books. In Promised Land, Jay Parini repossesses that vibrant intellectual heritage by examining the life and times of 'thirteen books that changed America.' Each of the books has been a watershed, gathering intellectual currents already in motion and marking a turn in American life and thought. Their influence remains pervasive, however hidden, and in his essays Parini demonstrates how these books entered American life and altered how we think and act in the world."
-- from the book's front flap
-- from the book's front flap
385 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
28 people are currently reading
515 people want to read
About the author
Jay Parini
192 books152 followersJay Parini (born 1948) is an American writer and academic. He is known for novels and poetry, biography and criticism.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
December 22, 2008
I originally picked this book up to hear what Mr. Parini had to say about Ben Franklin's autobiography. I teach it in my high school AP classes, so I wanted to see if I could get fresh insight on the book.
Of course, I am writing this review because I found much more than an insightful discussion of Franklin's autobiography.
Like all great books, this one builds on itself chapter by chapter, drawing lines of force between all of the books, painting American Literature as a centuries-long conversation.
By the time Parini writes about Kerouac's On the Road, he is drawing parallels between most of the books that he has discussed before, including Walden, The Promised Land, and Huck Finn, and he is doing so in a strong, formal prose that also invites the casual reader. Parini is, after all, a poet.
Some may quibble with the 13 books he chooses, but these particular books, put in chronological order, allow Parini (to paraphrase a line from Parini himself in the book) to do more than tell a picaresque story; it allows him to deliver a narrative, a plot, with one book necessarily issuing as a new voice in a long conversation.
I have read most of the 13 books included here, and what makes this book so powerful is Parini's ability to capture the tone and the impact of the books he discusses, even the ones that aren't "classics" in a literary sense. In fact, he does not simply choose books he likes; he displays condescension for "How to Win Friends and Influence People," while noting its powerful impact on him as a young man.
I originally planned on having my students read the Franklin chapter, but I'm pretty sure now they'll be reading the whole thing. "The Promised Land" is intelligent, insightful, powerful, and, above all, engaging.
Of course, I am writing this review because I found much more than an insightful discussion of Franklin's autobiography.
Like all great books, this one builds on itself chapter by chapter, drawing lines of force between all of the books, painting American Literature as a centuries-long conversation.
By the time Parini writes about Kerouac's On the Road, he is drawing parallels between most of the books that he has discussed before, including Walden, The Promised Land, and Huck Finn, and he is doing so in a strong, formal prose that also invites the casual reader. Parini is, after all, a poet.
Some may quibble with the 13 books he chooses, but these particular books, put in chronological order, allow Parini (to paraphrase a line from Parini himself in the book) to do more than tell a picaresque story; it allows him to deliver a narrative, a plot, with one book necessarily issuing as a new voice in a long conversation.
I have read most of the 13 books included here, and what makes this book so powerful is Parini's ability to capture the tone and the impact of the books he discusses, even the ones that aren't "classics" in a literary sense. In fact, he does not simply choose books he likes; he displays condescension for "How to Win Friends and Influence People," while noting its powerful impact on him as a young man.
I originally planned on having my students read the Franklin chapter, but I'm pretty sure now they'll be reading the whole thing. "The Promised Land" is intelligent, insightful, powerful, and, above all, engaging.
September 23, 2020
Jay Parini's Promised Land: 13 Books That Changed America represents an anthology discussing 13 works that form a social narrative on United States History and serve to define the continuing evolution in the way in which the country sees itself. There are other books that seek to present the country in a social context rather than focusing merely on major political & other figures, key dates, important battles, etc. but Parini's book does this within a literary framework, something that I find quite compelling.
One could argue with the books chosen, as a few at this site do rather intensely but the format is valid and I find the author's choice of books rather convincing. However, beyond the 13 Jay Parini has chosen to make his case, in an appendix he lists 100 further books that have changed America.
I have long considered the U.S. an ongoing social experiment, largely involving the immigrant experience, with various attempts at integrating or merging disparate factions, races & ethnicities following the overthrow of an essentially British-based system in which most of the early non-Native American settlers were from England.
The author asks the reader to examine each of the chosen 13 books as moments when the country was forced to reconsider itself because of the particular vantage point of an individual author, rather than because of an act of congress, a presidential mandate or the turmoil of the Civil War that violently separated the states & its citizens from each other. Rather than a history of the U.S. like that of Samuel Eliot Morrison or another historian, Promised Land takes 13 books that represent "a climate of opinion" and attempts to examine how each volume had an impact on the development of the United States.
On Plymouth Plantation by John Bradford looks at how the Puritan "Separatists" squared off vs. "Capitalists", with religious partisans battling for control against those eager to turn the land to their economic advantage, also including coverage of the terms of the Mayflower Compact in 1621. Next, there is a brief exposition of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays commenting on & promoting the American Constitution from varying angles, written by Alexander Hamilton (52 essays), James Madison (28) & John Jay (5), with the last author listed as "Publius".
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is viewed as displaying "self-confidence bordering on arrogance, a quality that would become part of the American character." Franklin's list of virtues reminds one of those espoused by Gatsby, including common sense & good cheer with Jesus & Plato as models.
The Journals of Westward Expansion by Lewis & Clark is seen as an American journey west & not just one made by the intrepid explorers at Jefferson's behest, telling of "a way into the wilderness & the way home as well." With Thoreau's Walden, we learn of a man "who found in nature what others found in religion", the story of a man who is said to have influenced the likes of Gandhi, Martin Luther King & even Tolstoy, among countless others. Uncle Tom's Cabin "opened a vein of discourse that has never been exhausted, recalling the bleak history of race relations in the U.S." Abraham Lincoln was extremely moved & influenced by the book by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
In Parini's view Huckleberry Finn is a covert autobiography that celebrates American independence & Twain's as well, with the author choosing to affirm his freedom even while chancing damnation. It is remembered that Hemingway saw all American literature as beginning with Twain's book, which evidences social commentary in the form of a cherished novel!
The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. DuBois, written by the 1st African-American to earn a PhD from Harvard University serves as a bridge between the Emancipation Proclamation and the speech by Martin Luther King in 1963, a book that serves to help today's reader comprehend our continuing racial division. Promised Land by Mary Antin is a tableau of the immigrant experience, a memoir personified by Antin's words: "Mine is the whole majestic past & mine is the shining future."
Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends & Influence People is an "early prototype & an iconic model of the self-help genre." While some of the suggested behavior may seem trivial & overtly insincere, the book apparently helped Jay Parini make it through a period as a very shy boy. Dale Carnegie's book has never been out of print & continues to benefit others.
Benjamin Spock's Common Sense of Baby & Child Care has sold more than 50 million copies
& 40+ languages, a common sense approach to dealing with the nature vs. nurture debate, also accentuating the role of the father in a child's life. Lastly, there is what I consider the most curious choice of the 13, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, though this book uses the term "Promised Land" frequently & seems inspired by Walt Whitman, seeking a "Paradise Within Thee", a Beat-Era novel edited by Malcolm Cowley, who worked with Hemingway & Fitzgerald but who apparently "sanitized" the scroll version of Kerouac's memoir/novel, a statement that continues as both an influence for some & a book eagerly banned by others.
I've read & enjoyed several other books by Jay Parini, a gifted writer & professor at Middlebury College, including biographies of Robert Frost & John Steinbeck. Promised Land: 13 Books That Changed America does include some repetitious phrasings + a fairly distinct point of view but the intent of the book is still pleasantly challenging, forming a pathway 0f the American Imagination over 3+ centuries and then coming to grips with each book, titles that while not perhaps always the most-sold or best-liked, were forces for change within an ever-evolving American landscape.
*Among Jay Parini's many books, The Last Station, dealing with Leo Tolstoy's final year of life & told from multiple viewpoints, was turned into an Academy Award nominated film.
One could argue with the books chosen, as a few at this site do rather intensely but the format is valid and I find the author's choice of books rather convincing. However, beyond the 13 Jay Parini has chosen to make his case, in an appendix he lists 100 further books that have changed America.
I have long considered the U.S. an ongoing social experiment, largely involving the immigrant experience, with various attempts at integrating or merging disparate factions, races & ethnicities following the overthrow of an essentially British-based system in which most of the early non-Native American settlers were from England.
The author asks the reader to examine each of the chosen 13 books as moments when the country was forced to reconsider itself because of the particular vantage point of an individual author, rather than because of an act of congress, a presidential mandate or the turmoil of the Civil War that violently separated the states & its citizens from each other. Rather than a history of the U.S. like that of Samuel Eliot Morrison or another historian, Promised Land takes 13 books that represent "a climate of opinion" and attempts to examine how each volume had an impact on the development of the United States.
On Plymouth Plantation by John Bradford looks at how the Puritan "Separatists" squared off vs. "Capitalists", with religious partisans battling for control against those eager to turn the land to their economic advantage, also including coverage of the terms of the Mayflower Compact in 1621. Next, there is a brief exposition of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays commenting on & promoting the American Constitution from varying angles, written by Alexander Hamilton (52 essays), James Madison (28) & John Jay (5), with the last author listed as "Publius".
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is viewed as displaying "self-confidence bordering on arrogance, a quality that would become part of the American character." Franklin's list of virtues reminds one of those espoused by Gatsby, including common sense & good cheer with Jesus & Plato as models.
The Journals of Westward Expansion by Lewis & Clark is seen as an American journey west & not just one made by the intrepid explorers at Jefferson's behest, telling of "a way into the wilderness & the way home as well." With Thoreau's Walden, we learn of a man "who found in nature what others found in religion", the story of a man who is said to have influenced the likes of Gandhi, Martin Luther King & even Tolstoy, among countless others. Uncle Tom's Cabin "opened a vein of discourse that has never been exhausted, recalling the bleak history of race relations in the U.S." Abraham Lincoln was extremely moved & influenced by the book by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
In Parini's view Huckleberry Finn is a covert autobiography that celebrates American independence & Twain's as well, with the author choosing to affirm his freedom even while chancing damnation. It is remembered that Hemingway saw all American literature as beginning with Twain's book, which evidences social commentary in the form of a cherished novel!
The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. DuBois, written by the 1st African-American to earn a PhD from Harvard University serves as a bridge between the Emancipation Proclamation and the speech by Martin Luther King in 1963, a book that serves to help today's reader comprehend our continuing racial division. Promised Land by Mary Antin is a tableau of the immigrant experience, a memoir personified by Antin's words: "Mine is the whole majestic past & mine is the shining future."
Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends & Influence People is an "early prototype & an iconic model of the self-help genre." While some of the suggested behavior may seem trivial & overtly insincere, the book apparently helped Jay Parini make it through a period as a very shy boy. Dale Carnegie's book has never been out of print & continues to benefit others.
Benjamin Spock's Common Sense of Baby & Child Care has sold more than 50 million copies
& 40+ languages, a common sense approach to dealing with the nature vs. nurture debate, also accentuating the role of the father in a child's life. Lastly, there is what I consider the most curious choice of the 13, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, though this book uses the term "Promised Land" frequently & seems inspired by Walt Whitman, seeking a "Paradise Within Thee", a Beat-Era novel edited by Malcolm Cowley, who worked with Hemingway & Fitzgerald but who apparently "sanitized" the scroll version of Kerouac's memoir/novel, a statement that continues as both an influence for some & a book eagerly banned by others.
I've read & enjoyed several other books by Jay Parini, a gifted writer & professor at Middlebury College, including biographies of Robert Frost & John Steinbeck. Promised Land: 13 Books That Changed America does include some repetitious phrasings + a fairly distinct point of view but the intent of the book is still pleasantly challenging, forming a pathway 0f the American Imagination over 3+ centuries and then coming to grips with each book, titles that while not perhaps always the most-sold or best-liked, were forces for change within an ever-evolving American landscape.
*Among Jay Parini's many books, The Last Station, dealing with Leo Tolstoy's final year of life & told from multiple viewpoints, was turned into an Academy Award nominated film.
October 18, 2018
Within the constraints of a close look at a dozen books that had an impact, this is an excellent read. I liked the way he examined the books through set mini-chapters within the chapter on each book, with the final mini-chapter examining the legacy.
You will find some of the standard impact books: Walden and Huckleberry Finn, to name two. (Although I like Walden, it must be the most unread impact book there is today. It's an impact book, even if no one can get through it).
But you will also find interesting choices: The Journals of Lewis and Clark, and Dr. Spock's Baby Book, to name two.
Of the books I have read about books, I would put this one in the top five.
You will find some of the standard impact books: Walden and Huckleberry Finn, to name two. (Although I like Walden, it must be the most unread impact book there is today. It's an impact book, even if no one can get through it).
But you will also find interesting choices: The Journals of Lewis and Clark, and Dr. Spock's Baby Book, to name two.
Of the books I have read about books, I would put this one in the top five.
Currently reading
June 19, 2017This will take me years to finish. I read the first chapter on the History of Plymouth Plantation in conjunction with reading the History of Plymouth Plantation (free download from Amazon). William Bradford may have started with a bunch of religious refugees, but he built a secular society.
The second chapter covers the Federalist Papers and another free download from Amazon. This is a bunch of newspaper columns that give some insight into the concerns of the day. But it isn't the Constitution.
The third chapter covers the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (another free download from Amazon). Parini discusses the fact that an autobiography can be just as fictional as a novel. I don't think Ben would rate a place on the $100 bill by today's standards.
The fourth chapter discusses the History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Vols 1 and 2. Volume 1 was another free download from Amazon, but I spent $9.99 for Vol 2. They were some couragous explorers who suffered through bad weather, starvation, fleas, mosquitoes,etc. but their attitude to the "red children" spoils the heroics.
The fifth chapter goes over Thoreau's Walden, a description of living a simple life close to nature in a self-built cabin near Walden Pond. The author puts the text into the context of the transcendentalism of Thoreau's friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Alas, I am not into philosophy and just saw this as a gripe about civilization and a love of nature.
Chapter six covers Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. This is a compilation of good and bad slave stories with overly sentimental and stereotypical characters, but conveys the message that slaves are people and not things and are to be treated as people. Not that different than reading Dickens.
In chapter seven, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn continues Stowe's attempt to humanize negroes. I also see many similarities to Dickens' gibes at the pomposity of the cultured and the religious.
Chapter eight covers the The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. He has collected 14 essays covering his accounts of life in the south, the role of education, and his response to Booker T Washington's "Uncle Tom" stance (see chapter six). From my perspective, he writes at a high literary level, with quotes in German and references to Greek mythology. I am guessing that he is writing over the heads of his audience because of a need to impress them with his education.
Chapter nine was a surprise: I had never heard of this book and I enjoyed reading it. Mary Antin wrote a book, The Promised Land, relating her first 20 or so years starting with her beginnings in a repressive Jewish "Pale" in Belarus, her emigration to America, and her "Americanization" in the slums of Boston. She was a smart girl, eager to learn, and bold enough to join in with aristocrats, newspaper editors, and scientists. She attributes much of her success to the freedoms her parents gave her, despite extreme poverty, and the free public schools and libraries,
The second chapter covers the Federalist Papers and another free download from Amazon. This is a bunch of newspaper columns that give some insight into the concerns of the day. But it isn't the Constitution.
The third chapter covers the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (another free download from Amazon). Parini discusses the fact that an autobiography can be just as fictional as a novel. I don't think Ben would rate a place on the $100 bill by today's standards.
The fourth chapter discusses the History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Vols 1 and 2. Volume 1 was another free download from Amazon, but I spent $9.99 for Vol 2. They were some couragous explorers who suffered through bad weather, starvation, fleas, mosquitoes,etc. but their attitude to the "red children" spoils the heroics.
The fifth chapter goes over Thoreau's Walden, a description of living a simple life close to nature in a self-built cabin near Walden Pond. The author puts the text into the context of the transcendentalism of Thoreau's friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Alas, I am not into philosophy and just saw this as a gripe about civilization and a love of nature.
Chapter six covers Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. This is a compilation of good and bad slave stories with overly sentimental and stereotypical characters, but conveys the message that slaves are people and not things and are to be treated as people. Not that different than reading Dickens.
In chapter seven, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn continues Stowe's attempt to humanize negroes. I also see many similarities to Dickens' gibes at the pomposity of the cultured and the religious.
Chapter eight covers the The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. He has collected 14 essays covering his accounts of life in the south, the role of education, and his response to Booker T Washington's "Uncle Tom" stance (see chapter six). From my perspective, he writes at a high literary level, with quotes in German and references to Greek mythology. I am guessing that he is writing over the heads of his audience because of a need to impress them with his education.
Chapter nine was a surprise: I had never heard of this book and I enjoyed reading it. Mary Antin wrote a book, The Promised Land, relating her first 20 or so years starting with her beginnings in a repressive Jewish "Pale" in Belarus, her emigration to America, and her "Americanization" in the slums of Boston. She was a smart girl, eager to learn, and bold enough to join in with aristocrats, newspaper editors, and scientists. She attributes much of her success to the freedoms her parents gave her, despite extreme poverty, and the free public schools and libraries,
July 19, 2014
I have a bit of a soft-spot and curiosity for books about books and/or authors, and that is just what PROMISED LAND promises in its subtitle: Thirteen Books That Changed America.
THIRTEEN? Well, I stumbled a bit on the baker's dozen number, but List-Lovers take note: while in the main body of this book the author expounds extensively on thirteen books, in the appendix readers are treated with a list of ONE HUNDRED more influential books -- each with brief commentary!
Clearly, this 2008 book is scholarly and academic in both content and style -- hardly for everyone--- but it's well-organized and educational-- and it's NOT necessary to read every word to benefit from author Jay Parini's thought-provoking effort to identify and acquaint us with books that changed America.
Before identifying the specific titles that serve as separate chapters, here's a word about the four part chapter organization:
Part 1 introduces the book and its cultural importance.
Part 2 refers to the writer and gives biographical and historical context -- the backstory, sometimes with the personal impact on the author.
Part 3 describes in considerable detail the actual book.
Part 4 ends with the legacy/impact of the work, with some mention of books that followed.
So, what books do you think were chosen that "helped to create the intellectual and emotional contours" of America and that "played a pivotal role in developing a complex value system"?
..........................
Here are Parini's choices:
****quotation marks indicate quotes from Parini's book
1. Of Plymouth Plantation:
William Bradford's journal written between 1620 and 1647 that offered a "founding myth" when the complete, handwritten work was discovered by chance in 1855 in England and published a year later in the US.
2.The Federalist Papers by Publius (means "friend of the people")
85 argumentative essays that "form the bedrock of American government" originally appearing in NY newspapers in 1787-88, in defense of the proposed U.S. Constitution (from the Philadelphia convention) that needed at least nine states for ratification.
52 essays by Alexander Hamilton, 28 by James Madison, and 5 by John Jay... 3 men of the ENLIGHTENMENT steeped in writings of Montesquieu, John Locke, and David Hume who believed in "rational, balanced government that served the needs of its people." Some essays may have been passed back and forth: hence, when gathered into a volume, the author was designated as Publius.
3.The Autobiography of Ben Franklin (1793)
Until Ben Franklin's posthumously published self-written story of his life, "the world had no obvious model for this kind of memoir, one that tracks the creation of an INDIVIDUAL SELF" and offered a "template for self-invention and a good deal of inspiration as well."
4. The Journals of Lewis and Clark
"Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838) took daily notes, which they later transferred into bound journals... fluent, vivid, detailed, and descriptive. They conduct the willing reader along the trail, over eight thousand miles, beginning in St. Louis in 1804, then moving along the Missouri River to a winter camp in what is now North Dakota, continuing on through spring over the Continental Divide with marvelous new guides and translators: Toussaint Charbonneau (a Canadian trapper) and his Shoshone bride, Sacagawea."
The group (40 men, one woman), after making it to the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific, and "wintering out in what is now Oregon...returned as heroes to St. Louis, arriving in late September 1806."
"The JOURNALS found an audience greedy for information about this wilderness wonderland, with its exotic birds and animals, its thrilling landscapes, and its native people."
5. Walden by Henry David Thoreau (1854)
WALDEN has a "unique place in American literature as a work of spirituality, autobiographical adventure, and natural description."
"By putting himself at the center of his work, combining... autobiography with nature writing of a profound order, Thoreau created in Walden a book that continues to invite us to live more deliberately, in closer touch with the natural world, questioning the values that we hold and the broad assumptions of society at large... a direct challenge to American materialism"...
6. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
"Few books in any generation compare with UNCLE TOM'S CABIN for sheer impact. Not only was it a bestseller of gigantic proportions, breaking all records for the nineteenth century, but it changed the way people thought about race -- perhaps the dominant issue in American culture over the past two centuries. It fueled the abolitionist movement in obvious ways, drawing attention to the horrors of slavery and putting African American characters before a mass (largely white) audience in vivid ways."
7. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1885)
The novel (published 1885) takes place 25 years or so earlier during the “years when slavery was still in place, though fraying at the edges. In this, Twain treads some of the territory already occupied by Uncle Tom’s Cabin; but he and Harriet Beecher Stowe attack slavery in very different terms. Twain… comes at the subject indirectly, simply by showing us the nobility of Jim.”
“Twain addresses nearly every major theme in American literature and thought, including the subtle power of nature and the mysteries of religion… Twain…asks questions about parentage, family structure, and emotional ties that bind, or fail to bind.” He puts “a black man up against white society…finding him at least equal to the best of them… Most centrally, Twain asks his readers to consider the value of civilization itself.”
8. The Souls of Black Folk by W.E. B. Du Bois (1903)
14 separate essays and sketches…on the meaning of race in America … “ranging from soulful memoir… to straightforward sociology and cultural analysis to lyrical evocations of black ‘soul,’ as manifested in religious writings and poetry, music and speech.”
9.The Promised Land by Mary Antin (1912)
Antin’s national bestselling book established the genre of immigrant autobiography /memoir and helped shape attitudes during a “tumultuous era of immigration.” Mary Antin (1881-1949) arrived from her Russian Jewish community in 1894 as part of the “so-called Great Migration, which runs from the last decades of the nineteenth century through the beginnings of World War 1…. These immigrants, often poor and unskilled, were mostly Jews and Catholics from Eastern Europe and Russia, from Italy, Greece, and Ireland.”
The immigrant memoir is a “paradigm of sorts, one that usually begins far away, in the Old Country, where living conditions are hard, even impossible. In the midst of poverty and oppression, the writer learns of a distant place across the sea, a promised land of milk and honey…Untold wealth lies within easy reach, and not only does freedom from oppression exist, but the class system itself has been seriously disrupted if not dismantled. The hopeful pilgrim crosses an ocean… It’s a difficult passage, and many die along the way. Making matters worse, the immigrant lands in the New World only to find out that the wonders and wealth have bee exaggerated. A struggle ensues, and it takes many years before difficult odds (poverty, prejudice, ignorance) are overcome. In the end, the memoirist survives, even prospers. Assimilation occurs.”
10.How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (1936)
A model book of the self-help genre that “appeared in the dark of the Great Depression.” It gave readers a way to “reinvent themselves in a country where self-invention itself defines our culture.” The negative way to see the book: “Carnegie taught people how to get ahead by flattering those in power and by ingratiating themselves with those in a position to advance their interests…In a more positive light, he taught people to tap their hidden powers and use parts of themselves previously repressed.”
“Unlike our European counterparts, who derive their sense of self from family connections, Americans are by nature entrepreneurs of selfhood.”
11.The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care by Benjamin Spock (1946)
Dr. Spock’s book “changed the way Americans raised their children, probably forever” and its “commercial success remains the stuff of legend.”
12. On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
Kerouac’s road novel “identified, and helped to define, the notion of an American counterculture.”
13.The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (1963)
This book had a “shock effect… and almost single-handedly ignited a revolutionary phase that has deeply affected the lives of countless American women and men.” It “paved the way for the contemporary feminist movement…” Social revolutions occur in waves; the first wave began with the suffragettes at the 1848 Seneca Falls convention that culminated in the 19th amendment (women’s right to vote) and Friedan’s era was thought to be the second wave (focus on middle class housewives) that gathered steam in the 1970s. (A third wave began in the 1980s when writers faulted Friedan for being too narrow and naïve of the class /gender/ethnic issues.)
……………………..
One Hundred More Books that Changed America -- chronologically listed beginning with Bartolome de Las Casas 1552 book A Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indies
Few masterpieces of fiction… not necessarily books that might be the “greatest” books in American history.. “They are works that either defined a period or produced a notable shift or expansion of consciousness” or helped “transform a field of inquiry.”
The list is only of authors (mostly)... you'll have to get the book to see the titles... or guess!
De las Casas
John Smith
Thomas Morton
Roger Williams
Cotton Mather
Jonathan Edwards
Thomas Paine
de Crevecoeur
T. Jefferson
Judith Murray
William Bartram
Parson Mason Locke Weems
Washington Irving
James Fenimore Cooper
Noah Webster
Joseph Smith
Edgar Allen Poe
Francis Parkman
Herman Melville
Walt Whitman
Horatio Alger
Mary Baker Eddy
Joel Chandler Harris
William James
Alfred Thayer Mahan
Booker T Washington
The Sears, Roebuck Catalog
Upton Sinclair
Charles Alexander Eastman
Jane Addams
John Muir
James Weldon Johnson
Charles A Beard
Robert Frost
John Dewey
H.L. Mencken
Frederick Jackson Turner
Sinclair Lewis
Emily Post
Bruce Barton
Alain Locke
Ernest Hemingway
Margaret Sanger
Charles Lindburgh
Robert/Helen Lynd
Irma/Marion Rombauer
Reinhold Niebuhr
Margaret Mitchell
Zora Neal Hurston
John Steinbeck
James Agee
Friedrich von Hayek
Richard Wright
John Hersey
The Kinsey Reports
Thomas Merton
GOre Vidal
Norbert Weiner
Joseph Campbell
J D Salinger
Ralph Ellison
Norman Vincent Peale
B F Skinner
Noam Chomsky
Alan Watts
John Kenneth Galbraith
Strunk and White
Joseph Heller
Helen Gurley Brown
Rachel Carson
Milton Friedman
Michael Harrington
Thomas S Kuhn
Sylvia Plath
James D Watson
Whole Earth Catalog
The Pentagon Papers
Dr. Atkins
Our Bodies,Ourselves
Bernstein and Woodward
Annie Dillard
Alex Haley
Adrienne Rich
Smoking & Health
Jane Fonda
Peters & Waterman
Stephen R Covey
Bill McKibben
Samuel P Huntington
Rick Warren
Al Gore (2006)
April 26, 2021
This is a great book, although Ii confess to already being a biased fan of Panini. It’s really 13 essays, only loosely connected, but they are all well-written, accessible, and well-researched. The book could be seen as an apologia for America’s existing canon. The Federalist Papers, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Walden, Huckleberry Finn, are all there, each attesting to America’s exceptionalism. Even the critical books, including Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Souls of Black Folk, seem only to demonstrate the extent to which America’s literary tradition has been uniquely self-critical and reform-minded. Still, it’s wonderful to be confronted by a strong defense of the canon, if only to sharpen one’s critique. The oddest choices for lasting literary influence are Dr. Spock’s book on parenting and Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. But the oddness of these works just helps the reader to reflect upon the capricious nature of selecting the key literary documents in American history.
July 29, 2009
I'm feeling a little indifferent about this book having finished it. I was really interested to see what books Parini included in his list, and I would say that for the most part I agree with him, that these 13 books are influential and inform us about ourselves. Now, whether they helped change or shape American, of that I'm not so sure.
Parini says right off the bat that other people will have other lists, and that's really true of all 'best of' lists. The biggest problem that I have with his contention that these books helped change America is that at least the first of the books weren't even known about to contemporaries. For example, the first book is Of Plymouth Plantation which I highly doubt was widely read at the time. In my mind, if one wants to influence, shape, or change America with a book, it needs to have been read.
It seems to me that the events happening in the books now speak to a feeling about America then. Lewis and Clark's journals are included in Parini's list and while they seem to evoke feelings of Manifest Destiny and conquering of the Western Frontier by American's, I am not entirely convinced that people reading Lewis and Clark's journals at the time of publication were moved to further feelings of frontier.
I really enjoyed the organization of the book. Each of the 13 books was dealt with in four parts. The first part briefly introduces the book and it's importance. The second part gives some biographical information about the author. The third part gives a more in-depth discussion of the book specifically, and the fourth part wraps it all up and re-states it's importance.
I must admit that I haven't read all the books on this list. As a political science student in college I read the Federalist Papers and as a child of the Western US I have read versions of Lewis and Clark's journeys. That being said, I worry about Parini's critism. Specifically, his discussion of Lewis and Clark's journals and the benevolent sprirt of the Corps of Discovery and how they only came in the spirit of peace, yadda yadda. I know from growing up along Lewis and Clark's trail that the Corps was not that benevolent and kind to all the Native people they came in contact with.
Overall, I would recommend the book because it's a good thinking piece. It would be great for a book group, because there is certainly a lot of opportunities for discussion. It's very well organized and therefore readable, just not so sure that as social/historical commentary it's all that accurate and useful.
Parini says right off the bat that other people will have other lists, and that's really true of all 'best of' lists. The biggest problem that I have with his contention that these books helped change America is that at least the first of the books weren't even known about to contemporaries. For example, the first book is Of Plymouth Plantation which I highly doubt was widely read at the time. In my mind, if one wants to influence, shape, or change America with a book, it needs to have been read.
It seems to me that the events happening in the books now speak to a feeling about America then. Lewis and Clark's journals are included in Parini's list and while they seem to evoke feelings of Manifest Destiny and conquering of the Western Frontier by American's, I am not entirely convinced that people reading Lewis and Clark's journals at the time of publication were moved to further feelings of frontier.
I really enjoyed the organization of the book. Each of the 13 books was dealt with in four parts. The first part briefly introduces the book and it's importance. The second part gives some biographical information about the author. The third part gives a more in-depth discussion of the book specifically, and the fourth part wraps it all up and re-states it's importance.
I must admit that I haven't read all the books on this list. As a political science student in college I read the Federalist Papers and as a child of the Western US I have read versions of Lewis and Clark's journeys. That being said, I worry about Parini's critism. Specifically, his discussion of Lewis and Clark's journals and the benevolent sprirt of the Corps of Discovery and how they only came in the spirit of peace, yadda yadda. I know from growing up along Lewis and Clark's trail that the Corps was not that benevolent and kind to all the Native people they came in contact with.
Overall, I would recommend the book because it's a good thinking piece. It would be great for a book group, because there is certainly a lot of opportunities for discussion. It's very well organized and therefore readable, just not so sure that as social/historical commentary it's all that accurate and useful.
January 28, 2012
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Parini follows up his analysis of his top 13 with a list of 100 more and I was inspired to add several to my to-read list, as well as deciding to re-read Huck Finn. I liked how he traced consistent American themes through his list of 13 key books, comparing and contrasting Ben Franklin, for example, with Dale Carnegie, and drawing relationships between external and internal exploration (see Huck Finn, Walden, On The Road). Parini is an optimist about the American experiments in democracy and self-improvement. He acknowledges our failings, but I agree with him that our intentions are good and that our best literature points the way.
I especially enjoyed his discussion of Dr. Spock, which was my own parenting bible. I agree with him that Spock gets a bum rap for being "permissive" in the sense that most people mean it. Spock most emphatically did not advocate permissive parenting; he just didn't advocate spanking and yelling. But where I think Parini misses the boat a little in his analysis of the objections to Spock is that he doesn't completely take into account how radical it was for Spock to advocate that parents trust themselves. When traditionalists accuse Spock of being "permissive" I think this is often what they're talking about whether they're fully aware of it or not. For traditionalists, it doesn't feel right that parents should trust themselves rather than religious, medical or academic authorities.
I especially enjoyed his discussion of Dr. Spock, which was my own parenting bible. I agree with him that Spock gets a bum rap for being "permissive" in the sense that most people mean it. Spock most emphatically did not advocate permissive parenting; he just didn't advocate spanking and yelling. But where I think Parini misses the boat a little in his analysis of the objections to Spock is that he doesn't completely take into account how radical it was for Spock to advocate that parents trust themselves. When traditionalists accuse Spock of being "permissive" I think this is often what they're talking about whether they're fully aware of it or not. For traditionalists, it doesn't feel right that parents should trust themselves rather than religious, medical or academic authorities.
January 7, 2009
Such a good idea.
Thirteen important American books--but not the ones you thought.
Plymouth Plantation,
The Federalist Papers,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,
The Journals of Lewis and Clark,
Walden, Uncle Tom's Cabin,
...Huckleberry Finn,
The Souls of Black Folk,
The Promised Land,
Dale Carnegie (How To Win Friends...),
Dr. Spock's baby book,
On the Road and The Feminine Mystique!
Interesting books.
But this is SO terribly written.
This guy Parini does not love literature, reading, sentences.
He accumulates fragments. (There's something manic about the project. I bet the guy has a collection of great buildings constructed out of toothpicks.)
You can't read three paragraphs in a row. It's one topic, then another, then another. There's no idea, no throughline, no pursuit of anything.
He quotes great writing--and mangles it in the process. E.g., "Most men lead lives of 'quiet desperation'..." (110). That's Parini.
Either quote Thoreau--"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation"--or say 'he thought most people were pretty miserable,' but don't do this!
Awful.
Good idea, terribly executed--like so many things.
Take the list of books, and go to a good encyclopedia and read the articles on these books.
--E. R. O'Neill
Thirteen important American books--but not the ones you thought.
Plymouth Plantation,
The Federalist Papers,
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin,
The Journals of Lewis and Clark,
Walden, Uncle Tom's Cabin,
...Huckleberry Finn,
The Souls of Black Folk,
The Promised Land,
Dale Carnegie (How To Win Friends...),
Dr. Spock's baby book,
On the Road and The Feminine Mystique!
Interesting books.
But this is SO terribly written.
This guy Parini does not love literature, reading, sentences.
He accumulates fragments. (There's something manic about the project. I bet the guy has a collection of great buildings constructed out of toothpicks.)
You can't read three paragraphs in a row. It's one topic, then another, then another. There's no idea, no throughline, no pursuit of anything.
He quotes great writing--and mangles it in the process. E.g., "Most men lead lives of 'quiet desperation'..." (110). That's Parini.
Either quote Thoreau--"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation"--or say 'he thought most people were pretty miserable,' but don't do this!
Awful.
Good idea, terribly executed--like so many things.
Take the list of books, and go to a good encyclopedia and read the articles on these books.
--E. R. O'Neill
February 5, 2009
While critics agreed that the 13 works offered by Parini are seminal, they all thought that his short list was, well, too short. Some critics thought that, fundamentally, Parini set far too ambitious a goal and therefore found the book disappointing; others were happy to quibble with the works he selected. Second-guessing the author's choices is part of the fun, of course. Parini also included a bonus list of 100 additional influential books for readers to consider. However, a few critics cited some of the analysis as dull; the parts where Parini personalizes his selection (as in Carnegie's How to Win Friends) fared much better. In sum, Promised Landperhaps promises more than it delivers, but it is nonetheless a good starting point for understanding America's influential literary heritage.
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
February 11, 2016
If you're a reader yourself, you will certainly appreciate Jay Parini's wonderful analysis of the books he's chosen as having had the greatest impact on American thought and culture. Parini, himself a scholar, educator, writer and critic, places each work into historical context and deftly shows how it represents an element of the American "personality" or shaped American thinking. His choices range from William Bradford's journal about the Plymouth pilgrims to Betty Freidan's Feminine Mystique, and include such obvious candidates such as Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as well as less well-known works like Mary Antin's classic immigrant tale, The Promised Land. In the conclusion, Parini quotes Thomas Jefferson on the importance of studying the past, because it teaches citizens "how to judge for themselves what will secure or endanger their freedom." Parini's book is an excellent place to start!
August 23, 2015
This was a very useful text, providing details on thirteen pivotal American books. The organization within each book's section was a little odd, but the author's writing style made the importance of each book very clear. He excelled at putting each book into the context of its own time period while also bringing in modern day views. I especially liked the section on the Lewis and Clark journals. I really feel that we need an "Adventures of Lewis and Clark" TV series now. Thoreau came off as a bit shallow, celebrating self-sufficiency when he had no job and up until then was sponging off his friends and family. The final section on The Feminine Mystique provided a clear explanation of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd wave feminism. At the very end of the book is an appendix of 100 more important US publications, listed chronologically with explanations of what made them important.
May 19, 2023
عدد صفحاته:445
تتطور الشعوب والأمم بالأفكار التي تصير سلوكيات طبيعية وسجية تنتقل عبر الأجيال، لتشكل السمة التي يتميز بها شعب ما عن آخر، والكتاب الذي بين أيدينا فكرته قائمة عن أهمية الكتاب والفكرة التي يعالجها في تأثيرها على الشعب الأمريكي، ويرى الكاتب أن هناك أكثر من مئة كتاب ساعد على خلق الخطوط الفكرية والعاطفية لهذا البلد، اختار منها عدد ثلاثة عشر باعتبار الرقم -حسب الكاتب- يدل على الولايات الأولية المشكلة لهذا البلد، بحيث درس كل كتاب في أربع أقسام؛ الأول سياق التاريخي الذي أخرج فيه الكتاب، الثاني مرتبط بتعريف الكاتب، والثالث أبرز فيه عرضا وتلخيصا شاملا لأهم الأفكار التي ناقشها الكتاب، والرابع تأثيره القريب والبعيد الذي تركه في فكر وعاطفة الشعب الأمريكي. كما ورتب الكتب حسب تاريخ نشرها منذ مرحلة التأسيس القرن 18م إلى آخر كتاب في ستينيات القرن 20، التي رآها ذو أهمية في تغير الأحداث ومخيل الأمة الأمريكية بما سماه أساطيرها، أساطير مرتبطة بأرض الميعاد أرض الحرية والحلم التوراتي الغنى والرفاه، الذي يهاجر إليه الجميع بحثا عن ملاذ آخر أفضل مما هم فيه، بقارة أوربا الطافحة بالتقاليد والقيود والماضي.
وسأحاول ذكر أثر كل كتاب من هذه الكتب:
الكتاب الأول؛ "مزرعة بليموث" عبارة عن يوميات كتبت ما بين سنتي 1620 و1647 لصاحبها برادفورد، تحكي قصة المهاجرين الأوائل واستيطانهم ببليموث بولاية ماساشوستس وعلاقتهم مع الشعوب الأصلية، فهي بمثابة أسطورة التأسيس، جماعة هربت من اضطهاد بأوربا نحو أرض الميعاد والحرية لتؤسس دولة حرة بعيدة عن التقاليد والقيود الأوربية، و"عيد الشكر" الذي يحتفل به الأمريكيون دليل على الترابط بين المهاجرين والشعوب الأصلية مع الديك الرومي آت من هذه القصة الواقعية.ن
الكتاب الثاني؛ "الأوراق الفدرالية" عبارة عن 85 مقالة نشرت في صحف نيويورك بين عامي 1787 و1788م لتجمع فيما بعد على شكل كتاب وقعت باسم "بوبليوس" قنصل روماني دافع عن الجمهورية الرومانية، وقد كتبها ثلاث كتاب هم على التوالي؛ ألكسندر هاملتون وجيمس ماديسون وجون جاي، المتأثرين بأفكار الأنوار فولتير ومونتسكيو جون لوك وغيرهم، تطرح رؤية لإقامة حكومة نيابية لهذا البلد، فالكتاب هو حجر تأسيس للدساتير الأمريكية وقوانينها، وعليه يحتج ويبنى كل قانون بأمريكا.
الكتاب الثالث؛ "السيرة الذاتية لبنيامين فرانكلين"، نشرت بعد وفاته سنة 1793م، تتحدث عن شخصية تاريخية بارزة يعد من الآباء المؤسسين لهذه الدولة، تحكي عن شخص صبي وصل ارتفع في المراتب الاجتماعية وحقق الثروة والمجد بدون صلات عائلية أو تعليم رسمي أو ثروة موروثة، فهو نموذج الحلم الأمريكي بكل تفرعاته، ففرانكلين رجل أعمال وصاحب مكتبة وعالم ومخترع وكاتب وسياسي محنك، ويخبرنا الكاتب أن بنيامين فرانكلين مما اخترعه سيرته الذاتية نموذجا أمريكيا خالصا.
الكتاب الرابع؛ "يوميات لويس وكلارك" نشرت سنة 1814، عبارة عن رحلة استكشافية في عهد الرئيس الأمريكي جيفرسون إلى المناطق الغربية المنضمة حديثا آنذاك، قصد جمع المعلومات الجغرافية من نوع الحيوان والنبات والتضاريس وطبيعة السكان الأصليين، وذلك بغية فهم الأراضي الجديدة المنضمة لأمريكا ثم الاستفادة منها اقتصاديا وتجاريا، لتلهم مستكشفين الأمريكيين وتعاملهم مع المناطق الجديدة إلى القمر ومؤخر المريخ.
الكتاب الخامس؛ "والدن" لصاحبه هنري ديفيد ثورو التي كتبه بعدما انتقل إلى بركة والدن سنة 1845، فهو عبارة عن مذكرات تحدث فيها عن التحرر المادي والحرب والعبودية، ليشكل رابطة مع الطبيعة والغمر فيها، مستحدثا خطا أدبيا وفلسفة جديدة للتعامل مع الحياة، بعيدا عن المادة وغوصا في الروح عن طريق التسامي الطبيعي، وسعادته تكمن في البساطة والترو.
الكتاب السادس؛ "كوخ العم توم" كتبت سنة 1852م، بواسطة الروائية هارييت بيتشر ستو، والتي انتقدت في روايتها العبودية، كما ساهمت روايتها في التأثير على المجتمع الأمريكي، لتكون الرصاصة التي أعلنت الحرب الأهلية الأمريكية التي أدت إلى تحرر العبيد، وغيرت الفكرة السائدة عن العبودية آنذاك.
الكتاب السابع؛ "مغامرات هاكلبري فن" لصاحبه مارك توين سنة 1885، رواية تتحدث عن العبودية والحرية والغنى وجل المواضيع السياسية والاجتماعية بأمريكا، وقد أثرت على الأدب الأمريكي الحديث لتصبح كما أعلن همنجواي كل الأدب الحديث يأتي من هذه الرواية.
الكتاب الثامن؛ "أرواح جماعة السود" من تأليف دوبوا سنة 1903، فهو كتاب يمكن عده تأسيسيا حول العنصرية تجاه السود، وما يعانيه داخل المجتمع الأمريكي بعدما تحرر من عبوديته، ليلج عبودية جديدة وإن كانت مغلفة بالحرية، عبودية الفقر والأسى والتهميش والعنصرية، وقد ساهم في بزوغ حركات نضالية للسود استمرت زهاء المئة سنة من كتابة الكتاب ومازالت بأشكال مختلفة.
الكتاب التاسع؛ "أرض الميعاد" مذكرات لماري آنتين المرأة اليهودية المهاجرة إلى أمريكا الحلم التوراتي، كتب سنة 1912، وهو كتاب يروي قصة الهجرة الثانية من أوربا نحو أمريكا أوائل القرن 20م، بحثا عن فرص أفضل وحياة مرفهة تتميز بالحرية.
الكتاب العاشر؛ "كيف تكسب الأصدقاء وتؤثر في الناس" لصاحبه ديل كارنيجي سنة 1936م، ود كتبه إبان الكساد الكبير وتفاقم الأزمات النفسية وفقدان الثقة واليأس الذي عانه المجتمع الأمريكي، ليأتي هذا الكتاب معلما استغلال القدرات المخبوءة ثم الانفتاح على الآخرين وإظهار تقديرهم بشكل إيجابي، وهو من الكتب الأوائل فيما يسمى "التنمية البشرية" أسطورة برزت بأمريكا وانتشرت كالنار في الهشيم في باقي العالم.
الكتاب الحادي عشر؛ "الحصافة في رعاية الرضيع والطفل" لصاحبه بنيامين سبوك نشر سنة 1946 بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية، يتحدث عن الأساليب التربية وإعطاء الأولوية والحرية للطفل في تنشئت، ليخلق أجيالا نرجسية وفردانية كما انتقده الكثيرون، وإن رأى الكاتب أنه يقدم حرية للوالدين في التنشئة بعيدا عن الصرامة الوعظية والأوامر.
الكتاب الثاني عشر؛ "على الطريق" لصاحبه جاك كيرواك نشر أواخر الخمسينات وأوائل الستينات، رواية عن مهاجر إيطالي يبحث عن الحرية ضدا للثقافة السائدة وتمردا عليها وتحررا منها، لينتهي به الحال في التسامي مع الطبيعة والبحث عن الذات والحياة الروحية بعيدا عن الكنيسة قريبا من الطبيعة وأساليبها، ويمكن اعتبار الرواية بداية حقبة جديدة بدأها كتاب "والدن" لينشئ فكرا جديدا "تيار العصر الجديد" الأقرب إلى البوذية والهندوسية والتحرر من التقاليد والمادية ملتجئا للعربدة الشهوانية والنشوة الدينية.
الكتاب الثالث عشر؛ "الإحساس بالهيبة نحو النساء" لصاحبته بيتي فريدان نشر سنة 1963م، إبان الثورة الجنسية بأمريكا، فهو كتاب عن النسوية وحقوق المرأة المعاصرة، وكما أشار الكاتب فقد أثر بصورة عميقة على حيوات كثيرة من الأمريكيين رجالا ونساء، وبدأ سعار النسوية وعجل من التفكير الجديد عن سياسات الجنس، والموجة الثانية الذي بدأها الكت��ب تدعو النساء للعمل والمساواة ومقت ربات البيوت وتربية الأطفال.
تتطور الشعوب والأمم بالأفكار التي تصير سلوكيات طبيعية وسجية تنتقل عبر الأجيال، لتشكل السمة التي يتميز بها شعب ما عن آخر، والكتاب الذي بين أيدينا فكرته قائمة عن أهمية الكتاب والفكرة التي يعالجها في تأثيرها على الشعب الأمريكي، ويرى الكاتب أن هناك أكثر من مئة كتاب ساعد على خلق الخطوط الفكرية والعاطفية لهذا البلد، اختار منها عدد ثلاثة عشر باعتبار الرقم -حسب الكاتب- يدل على الولايات الأولية المشكلة لهذا البلد، بحيث درس كل كتاب في أربع أقسام؛ الأول سياق التاريخي الذي أخرج فيه الكتاب، الثاني مرتبط بتعريف الكاتب، والثالث أبرز فيه عرضا وتلخيصا شاملا لأهم الأفكار التي ناقشها الكتاب، والرابع تأثيره القريب والبعيد الذي تركه في فكر وعاطفة الشعب الأمريكي. كما ورتب الكتب حسب تاريخ نشرها منذ مرحلة التأسيس القرن 18م إلى آخر كتاب في ستينيات القرن 20، التي رآها ذو أهمية في تغير الأحداث ومخيل الأمة الأمريكية بما سماه أساطيرها، أساطير مرتبطة بأرض الميعاد أرض الحرية والحلم التوراتي الغنى والرفاه، الذي يهاجر إليه الجميع بحثا عن ملاذ آخر أفضل مما هم فيه، بقارة أوربا الطافحة بالتقاليد والقيود والماضي.
وسأحاول ذكر أثر كل كتاب من هذه الكتب:
الكتاب الأول؛ "مزرعة بليموث" عبارة عن يوميات كتبت ما بين سنتي 1620 و1647 لصاحبها برادفورد، تحكي قصة المهاجرين الأوائل واستيطانهم ببليموث بولاية ماساشوستس وعلاقتهم مع الشعوب الأصلية، فهي بمثابة أسطورة التأسيس، جماعة هربت من اضطهاد بأوربا نحو أرض الميعاد والحرية لتؤسس دولة حرة بعيدة عن التقاليد والقيود الأوربية، و"عيد الشكر" الذي يحتفل به الأمريكيون دليل على الترابط بين المهاجرين والشعوب الأصلية مع الديك الرومي آت من هذه القصة الواقعية.ن
الكتاب الثاني؛ "الأوراق الفدرالية" عبارة عن 85 مقالة نشرت في صحف نيويورك بين عامي 1787 و1788م لتجمع فيما بعد على شكل كتاب وقعت باسم "بوبليوس" قنصل روماني دافع عن الجمهورية الرومانية، وقد كتبها ثلاث كتاب هم على التوالي؛ ألكسندر هاملتون وجيمس ماديسون وجون جاي، المتأثرين بأفكار الأنوار فولتير ومونتسكيو جون لوك وغيرهم، تطرح رؤية لإقامة حكومة نيابية لهذا البلد، فالكتاب هو حجر تأسيس للدساتير الأمريكية وقوانينها، وعليه يحتج ويبنى كل قانون بأمريكا.
الكتاب الثالث؛ "السيرة الذاتية لبنيامين فرانكلين"، نشرت بعد وفاته سنة 1793م، تتحدث عن شخصية تاريخية بارزة يعد من الآباء المؤسسين لهذه الدولة، تحكي عن شخص صبي وصل ارتفع في المراتب الاجتماعية وحقق الثروة والمجد بدون صلات عائلية أو تعليم رسمي أو ثروة موروثة، فهو نموذج الحلم الأمريكي بكل تفرعاته، ففرانكلين رجل أعمال وصاحب مكتبة وعالم ومخترع وكاتب وسياسي محنك، ويخبرنا الكاتب أن بنيامين فرانكلين مما اخترعه سيرته الذاتية نموذجا أمريكيا خالصا.
الكتاب الرابع؛ "يوميات لويس وكلارك" نشرت سنة 1814، عبارة عن رحلة استكشافية في عهد الرئيس الأمريكي جيفرسون إلى المناطق الغربية المنضمة حديثا آنذاك، قصد جمع المعلومات الجغرافية من نوع الحيوان والنبات والتضاريس وطبيعة السكان الأصليين، وذلك بغية فهم الأراضي الجديدة المنضمة لأمريكا ثم الاستفادة منها اقتصاديا وتجاريا، لتلهم مستكشفين الأمريكيين وتعاملهم مع المناطق الجديدة إلى القمر ومؤخر المريخ.
الكتاب الخامس؛ "والدن" لصاحبه هنري ديفيد ثورو التي كتبه بعدما انتقل إلى بركة والدن سنة 1845، فهو عبارة عن مذكرات تحدث فيها عن التحرر المادي والحرب والعبودية، ليشكل رابطة مع الطبيعة والغمر فيها، مستحدثا خطا أدبيا وفلسفة جديدة للتعامل مع الحياة، بعيدا عن المادة وغوصا في الروح عن طريق التسامي الطبيعي، وسعادته تكمن في البساطة والترو.
الكتاب السادس؛ "كوخ العم توم" كتبت سنة 1852م، بواسطة الروائية هارييت بيتشر ستو، والتي انتقدت في روايتها العبودية، كما ساهمت روايتها في التأثير على المجتمع الأمريكي، لتكون الرصاصة التي أعلنت الحرب الأهلية الأمريكية التي أدت إلى تحرر العبيد، وغيرت الفكرة السائدة عن العبودية آنذاك.
الكتاب السابع؛ "مغامرات هاكلبري فن" لصاحبه مارك توين سنة 1885، رواية تتحدث عن العبودية والحرية والغنى وجل المواضيع السياسية والاجتماعية بأمريكا، وقد أثرت على الأدب الأمريكي الحديث لتصبح كما أعلن همنجواي كل الأدب الحديث يأتي من هذه الرواية.
الكتاب الثامن؛ "أرواح جماعة السود" من تأليف دوبوا سنة 1903، فهو كتاب يمكن عده تأسيسيا حول العنصرية تجاه السود، وما يعانيه داخل المجتمع الأمريكي بعدما تحرر من عبوديته، ليلج عبودية جديدة وإن كانت مغلفة بالحرية، عبودية الفقر والأسى والتهميش والعنصرية، وقد ساهم في بزوغ حركات نضالية للسود استمرت زهاء المئة سنة من كتابة الكتاب ومازالت بأشكال مختلفة.
الكتاب التاسع؛ "أرض الميعاد" مذكرات لماري آنتين المرأة اليهودية المهاجرة إلى أمريكا الحلم التوراتي، كتب سنة 1912، وهو كتاب يروي قصة الهجرة الثانية من أوربا نحو أمريكا أوائل القرن 20م، بحثا عن فرص أفضل وحياة مرفهة تتميز بالحرية.
الكتاب العاشر؛ "كيف تكسب الأصدقاء وتؤثر في الناس" لصاحبه ديل كارنيجي سنة 1936م، ود كتبه إبان الكساد الكبير وتفاقم الأزمات النفسية وفقدان الثقة واليأس الذي عانه المجتمع الأمريكي، ليأتي هذا الكتاب معلما استغلال القدرات المخبوءة ثم الانفتاح على الآخرين وإظهار تقديرهم بشكل إيجابي، وهو من الكتب الأوائل فيما يسمى "التنمية البشرية" أسطورة برزت بأمريكا وانتشرت كالنار في الهشيم في باقي العالم.
الكتاب الحادي عشر؛ "الحصافة في رعاية الرضيع والطفل" لصاحبه بنيامين سبوك نشر سنة 1946 بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية، يتحدث عن الأساليب التربية وإعطاء الأولوية والحرية للطفل في تنشئت، ليخلق أجيالا نرجسية وفردانية كما انتقده الكثيرون، وإن رأى الكاتب أنه يقدم حرية للوالدين في التنشئة بعيدا عن الصرامة الوعظية والأوامر.
الكتاب الثاني عشر؛ "على الطريق" لصاحبه جاك كيرواك نشر أواخر الخمسينات وأوائل الستينات، رواية عن مهاجر إيطالي يبحث عن الحرية ضدا للثقافة السائدة وتمردا عليها وتحررا منها، لينتهي به الحال في التسامي مع الطبيعة والبحث عن الذات والحياة الروحية بعيدا عن الكنيسة قريبا من الطبيعة وأساليبها، ويمكن اعتبار الرواية بداية حقبة جديدة بدأها كتاب "والدن" لينشئ فكرا جديدا "تيار العصر الجديد" الأقرب إلى البوذية والهندوسية والتحرر من التقاليد والمادية ملتجئا للعربدة الشهوانية والنشوة الدينية.
الكتاب الثالث عشر؛ "الإحساس بالهيبة نحو النساء" لصاحبته بيتي فريدان نشر سنة 1963م، إبان الثورة الجنسية بأمريكا، فهو كتاب عن النسوية وحقوق المرأة المعاصرة، وكما أشار الكاتب فقد أثر بصورة عميقة على حيوات كثيرة من الأمريكيين رجالا ونساء، وبدأ سعار النسوية وعجل من التفكير الجديد عن سياسات الجنس، والموجة الثانية الذي بدأها الكت��ب تدعو النساء للعمل والمساواة ومقت ربات البيوت وتربية الأطفال.
September 18, 2012
I have finally made it through all thirteen chapters. I loved that I found this book and love how Mr. Parini organized it. He has a formula that makes it easy to read. First, he tells you why he chose the particular book and something about its history as a public document. Second, he summarizes the book as it relates to his choice to include it in the 'Promised Land'. Third, he talks about the book and how it has been incorporated in our present society. A friend rattled off a list of books..."Well, did it include ????" No, it didn't include ???. I am not what Mr. Parini used as criteria as he went about an onerous task of selecting these thirteen books. I wondered at the beginning what other books were in the running. I found my answer. He has included an Appendix with 'One Hundred More Books That Changed America'. I guess if I wanted a reading list this is where I would start. My journey to the 'Promised Land' lasted from June through September. Now I am ready to find my next journey into the world of non-fiction. I read a lot, and I mean a lot of fiction, but I always have one non-fiction that I savor over a period of time.
#1 June 12, 2012 "Plymouth Plantation",
William Bradford, the second governor of the Colony. To summarize: "Establishing a beachhead for Puritans in New England, the Plymouth Colony ...acquired legendary status mainly because of the first Thanksgiving, as described by Bradford and, later translated into a national myth holiday that celebrates reconciliation and survival." p.27." noted by me: The Puritans came to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620. However, it was not the first,only, or oldest colony established by Europeans. (Other Puritans were in Massachusetts and Connecticut.) The English arrived in Virginia, at Jamestown, in 1607, but were not successful. The oldest settlement is St. Augustine established by the Spanish in 1565. The Spanish had also settled in Santa Fe by 1608.
#2 June 19, 2012 "The Federalist Papers",
by Publius (Pseudonym for the three authors, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay) It consists of 85 essays (52 by Hamilton, 28 by Madison, and 5 by Jay) in defense of the proposed U.S. Constitution recently drafted in Philadelphia. It was designed to persuade New Yorkers and people of other states to look favorably on the controversial documents and vote for it ratification. There were many against it. All states except New York had their own constitutions. In 1825, Jefferson recommended these essays as the best guide to what was in the minds of the framers, perhaps even better than the actual document itself. Hamilton lays out the general idea of the papers in one paragraph. By and large he and his co-authors stick pretty closely to this outline: "I propose, in a series of papers, to discuss the following interesting particulars: The utility of the UNION to your political prosperity-The insufficiency of the present Confederation to preserve that Union-The necessity of a government at least equally energetic with the one proposed, to the attainment of this object-The conformity of the proposed Constitution to the true principles of republican government-Its analogy to your own State constitution-and lastly, The additional security which its adoption will afford to the preservation of the species of government, to liberty, and to property."
#3 June 21, 2012 "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin"
Four things stand out to me. One-With this book Benjamin Franklin invented the category in our libraries labeled, Autobiography. There were memoirs in the past and they were mostly spiritual or intellectual, not one that tracks the creation of an individual self. Two-"It remains a foundational book for Americans, in that it offers a template for self-invention-in other words, 'The American Dream'. Three-In addition, he was a scientist of note. Not only did he fly a kite and prove that electricity is a single fluid and invented the lightening rod. The Franklin stove still exists. He was also a Statesman, playing an instrumental role in the creation of the American republic. Also, did I mention that he was a printer by occupation; established the first subscription library in America that led to our current library system; thought of the idea of fire insurance;started an academy that evolved into the University of Pennsylvania; devised the capital-raising vehicle of matching funds; and many more to mention.
#4 July 4, 2012 The Journals of Lewis and Clark...
...documenting for President Thomas Jefferson the recent Louisiana Purchase and looking for a water passage to the Pacific Ocean. They started out on the Missouri River hoping for a water passage to the West Coast. Along the way Sacajawea and her husband joined the Corps of Discovery. Their journals are still used today for researchers.
#5 July 13, 2012 Walden...
...is the major work of Henry D. Thoreau. Walden was selected because in the opinion of the author "it has inspired generations of young people to go off by themselves, to separate from the pack, listening instead of talking,reading, making note, marching to the beat of a different drummer. He was inspired and mentored by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The author in defense of his adding Walden to this list stressed Emerson's work, 'Nature', as an important influence on Thoreau. I wonder why he didn't select 'Nature' instead of Walden. The only conclusion that I could come to was that Emerson only wrote about living with nature. Whereas, Thoreau actually put action to his words and went to Walden Pond to live as he wrote.
#6 July 17, 2012 Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
It goes without saying that this book was a major influence on how the people thought about race in the 19th Century. It sold more copies of any book in the 19th Century except for the Bible. From Jay Parini in this book: "It fueled the abolitionist movement in obvious ways, drawing attention to the horrors of slavery and putting African American Characters before a mass (largely white) audience in vivid ways."
#7 July 22, 2012 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"In writing this novel, Twain forged a fresh medium for the American language, creating a salty, amusing vernacular, a flexible medium that could range from the highest to the lowest levels of thought and feeling in colorful, even 'coarse" diction.(157) Twain showed us how to talk and handed us one of our founding myths, which involves lighting out 'for the Territory,' heading off into unknown regions in search of the fable promised land.(158)" "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain call Huckleberry Finn."...Ernest Hemingway
#8 August 1, 2012 The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
The story of the black American evolved to the next step when this book was published. It gave 'white' Americans a sense that Afro-Americans actually had a soul. They had the same feeling, thoughts,and sense of family as a white man. In 1903, when the book was published, he defined the major problem of the 20th Century, "color-line". Although he had positive comments about George Washington Carver, he did not agree with his philosophy published in 'Up From Slavery' in which he argued that "blacks should propel themselves forward by entrepreneurial energy". He argued that to train blacks for a trade, encouraged them "to trade political power and civil rights for the freedom to cultivate a certain kind of education within the black community, accepting the notion of a separate but unequal black community". This book more than any other was an inspiration for the Civil Rights Movement. of the 50's and 60's.
#9 August 12, 2012 The Promised Land by Mary Antin
Antin's book was a national bestseller, "the most popular immigrant autobiography of its time", and a book that inspired a generation of newly minted American's, who saw in her story a version of their. "What it changed was American attitudes toward this frightening wave o newcomers. Her memoir also helped to confirm the United States as a land of promise. The immigrant memoir outlines the immigrant experience, its cycles of arrival, optimism, confusion, and assimilation. This genre will be "a staple of our literature"...and Mary Antin is a founding mother of this genre.(quotes are taken directly from the book to describe what I perceive to me to be the salient points...ones that I want to document so I can remember what I got from reading the author's opinion of this important book.
#10 August 22, 2012 How To Win Friends and Influence People
by Dale Carnegie
Background: This book appeared in the dark of the Great Depression when breadline formed in the streets. In the U.S. where failure is shameful and success has become something of a religion, there has always been a need for advice about how to get ahead..
No other book has been more successful at the business of success than this one. Published in 1936 is is an early prototype and iconic model of the self-help genre. "One can walk into any bookstore in America today and find long shelf of self-help books that owe a huge debt to Carnegie." Although the author admits that this book had a definite effect on his life and at some level still influences him, he is very critical about Carnegie's methods...calling them manipulative at the least. Carnegie's acknowledged forerunner was Benjamin Franklin (see No. 3) and many of his best ideas, are drawn from the world's sacred scriptures. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That is the essential message of this book."
#11 August 28, 2012 The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
By Benjamin Spock, M.D>
First thing that caught my attention: I missed being raised by Dr. Spock by seven years. The book was published in 1946. I cannot recall seeing a copy of Dr. Spock's book in our house. Although I have to say that my Mother and Dad always respected me as an individual. I was shy by nature so a "child should be seen not heard" was not an issue in our house.
The statement by the author says it all: "Dr. Benjamin Spock changed how Americans raised their children, probably forever." It helped shape the Baby Boom generation, who are now ready for retirement. Before Spock most advice on the raising of children came from the pulpit, "spare the rod,spoil the child". Dr. Spock's main message to mothers: you know more than you think you do; follow your instincts. He wanted children to grow in ways that suited their individual personalities, and to make the most of their innate abilities. It is interesting that Dr. Spock for most of his life was a well-known and loved pediatrician, speaker, and author. However, somewhere in the 1960's he became a antiwar activist advocating nuclear disarmament. He took part in protest marches and was actually charged with conspiring "to sponsor and support a nation-wide program of resistance" to the draft. (Note: In 1973, after the Vietnam War Congress abolished the military draft in favor of an all volunteer Army.)
All I have heard about Dr. Spock was that his theories were responsible for a permissive age of self-centered/indulgent children who grew into self-centered/indulgent adults. However, Garry Wills, the writer who spent time in jail with him remembers: "Spock was the father not of a permissive age, but of an imaginative one. He had a respect for individuality, in babies as in grown citizens....He had come to protest war, not to wage it..."
#12 September 6, 2012 On the Road, Jack Kerouac
I really cannot relate in any way to this book. I think it is because I am part of the generation Mr. Kerouac defined as the "Beat Generation". In 1957 my generation had already been established and it wasn't 'beat'. I was part of the establishment and 'beat' wasn't part of it. I am not really sure even why Mr. Parini chose this book as one of the 'Thirteen Books. His first sentence was the only explanation: "'On The Road' (1957) identified, and helped to define, the notion of an American counterculture." He compared it as he some of the other books he has chosen as a rite of passage mainly for the male of the species. Also, Mr. Parini summarized the goal of this book as the search for IT. IT's the "search for enlightenment, for heightened consciousness, for God," which never ends. And finally, I think, most importantly, his last sentence says it all: "the going may well be more important than actually getting there." As a recent TV commercial trying to sell us cars says: The destination is the journey.
# 13 The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
Mr. Parini chose to include this book not because it was the only book that played a role in the women's movement, but because of the shock effect it had..."which almost single-handedly ignited a revolutionary phase that has deeply affected the live of countless American women and men." In my opinion, this movement is still evolving. Women are still trying to find their place in the greater scheme of things. I am not sure I will see it settled in my life time.
and...
You know,I really can't relate to this book any more than I can 'On the Road'. I never had a 'stay at home' mom. My Mom and Dad owned a small cafe before the time of franchise fast food drive-ins. They both worked from 4am to 9pm every day, except Sunday. They didn't close on Sunday until all of the church crowd was served. I didn't find out until I was in my 20's that job opportunities were limited for women. Actually, maybe the fact that I didn't have a 'stay at home' mom...I call it a 'Life with Father' mom...made me dream to be one. I always wanted my Mom to be there when I got home from school. I can remember laying a guilt trip on my Mom..."why can't you be at home with cookies and milk when I get home from school like the other moms"? ...I didn't even like milk:)
#1 June 12, 2012 "Plymouth Plantation",
William Bradford, the second governor of the Colony. To summarize: "Establishing a beachhead for Puritans in New England, the Plymouth Colony ...acquired legendary status mainly because of the first Thanksgiving, as described by Bradford and, later translated into a national myth holiday that celebrates reconciliation and survival." p.27." noted by me: The Puritans came to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620. However, it was not the first,only, or oldest colony established by Europeans. (Other Puritans were in Massachusetts and Connecticut.) The English arrived in Virginia, at Jamestown, in 1607, but were not successful. The oldest settlement is St. Augustine established by the Spanish in 1565. The Spanish had also settled in Santa Fe by 1608.
#2 June 19, 2012 "The Federalist Papers",
by Publius (Pseudonym for the three authors, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay) It consists of 85 essays (52 by Hamilton, 28 by Madison, and 5 by Jay) in defense of the proposed U.S. Constitution recently drafted in Philadelphia. It was designed to persuade New Yorkers and people of other states to look favorably on the controversial documents and vote for it ratification. There were many against it. All states except New York had their own constitutions. In 1825, Jefferson recommended these essays as the best guide to what was in the minds of the framers, perhaps even better than the actual document itself. Hamilton lays out the general idea of the papers in one paragraph. By and large he and his co-authors stick pretty closely to this outline: "I propose, in a series of papers, to discuss the following interesting particulars: The utility of the UNION to your political prosperity-The insufficiency of the present Confederation to preserve that Union-The necessity of a government at least equally energetic with the one proposed, to the attainment of this object-The conformity of the proposed Constitution to the true principles of republican government-Its analogy to your own State constitution-and lastly, The additional security which its adoption will afford to the preservation of the species of government, to liberty, and to property."
#3 June 21, 2012 "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin"
Four things stand out to me. One-With this book Benjamin Franklin invented the category in our libraries labeled, Autobiography. There were memoirs in the past and they were mostly spiritual or intellectual, not one that tracks the creation of an individual self. Two-"It remains a foundational book for Americans, in that it offers a template for self-invention-in other words, 'The American Dream'. Three-In addition, he was a scientist of note. Not only did he fly a kite and prove that electricity is a single fluid and invented the lightening rod. The Franklin stove still exists. He was also a Statesman, playing an instrumental role in the creation of the American republic. Also, did I mention that he was a printer by occupation; established the first subscription library in America that led to our current library system; thought of the idea of fire insurance;started an academy that evolved into the University of Pennsylvania; devised the capital-raising vehicle of matching funds; and many more to mention.
#4 July 4, 2012 The Journals of Lewis and Clark...
...documenting for President Thomas Jefferson the recent Louisiana Purchase and looking for a water passage to the Pacific Ocean. They started out on the Missouri River hoping for a water passage to the West Coast. Along the way Sacajawea and her husband joined the Corps of Discovery. Their journals are still used today for researchers.
#5 July 13, 2012 Walden...
...is the major work of Henry D. Thoreau. Walden was selected because in the opinion of the author "it has inspired generations of young people to go off by themselves, to separate from the pack, listening instead of talking,reading, making note, marching to the beat of a different drummer. He was inspired and mentored by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The author in defense of his adding Walden to this list stressed Emerson's work, 'Nature', as an important influence on Thoreau. I wonder why he didn't select 'Nature' instead of Walden. The only conclusion that I could come to was that Emerson only wrote about living with nature. Whereas, Thoreau actually put action to his words and went to Walden Pond to live as he wrote.
#6 July 17, 2012 Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
It goes without saying that this book was a major influence on how the people thought about race in the 19th Century. It sold more copies of any book in the 19th Century except for the Bible. From Jay Parini in this book: "It fueled the abolitionist movement in obvious ways, drawing attention to the horrors of slavery and putting African American Characters before a mass (largely white) audience in vivid ways."
#7 July 22, 2012 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"In writing this novel, Twain forged a fresh medium for the American language, creating a salty, amusing vernacular, a flexible medium that could range from the highest to the lowest levels of thought and feeling in colorful, even 'coarse" diction.(157) Twain showed us how to talk and handed us one of our founding myths, which involves lighting out 'for the Territory,' heading off into unknown regions in search of the fable promised land.(158)" "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain call Huckleberry Finn."...Ernest Hemingway
#8 August 1, 2012 The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
The story of the black American evolved to the next step when this book was published. It gave 'white' Americans a sense that Afro-Americans actually had a soul. They had the same feeling, thoughts,and sense of family as a white man. In 1903, when the book was published, he defined the major problem of the 20th Century, "color-line". Although he had positive comments about George Washington Carver, he did not agree with his philosophy published in 'Up From Slavery' in which he argued that "blacks should propel themselves forward by entrepreneurial energy". He argued that to train blacks for a trade, encouraged them "to trade political power and civil rights for the freedom to cultivate a certain kind of education within the black community, accepting the notion of a separate but unequal black community". This book more than any other was an inspiration for the Civil Rights Movement. of the 50's and 60's.
#9 August 12, 2012 The Promised Land by Mary Antin
Antin's book was a national bestseller, "the most popular immigrant autobiography of its time", and a book that inspired a generation of newly minted American's, who saw in her story a version of their. "What it changed was American attitudes toward this frightening wave o newcomers. Her memoir also helped to confirm the United States as a land of promise. The immigrant memoir outlines the immigrant experience, its cycles of arrival, optimism, confusion, and assimilation. This genre will be "a staple of our literature"...and Mary Antin is a founding mother of this genre.(quotes are taken directly from the book to describe what I perceive to me to be the salient points...ones that I want to document so I can remember what I got from reading the author's opinion of this important book.
#10 August 22, 2012 How To Win Friends and Influence People
by Dale Carnegie
Background: This book appeared in the dark of the Great Depression when breadline formed in the streets. In the U.S. where failure is shameful and success has become something of a religion, there has always been a need for advice about how to get ahead..
No other book has been more successful at the business of success than this one. Published in 1936 is is an early prototype and iconic model of the self-help genre. "One can walk into any bookstore in America today and find long shelf of self-help books that owe a huge debt to Carnegie." Although the author admits that this book had a definite effect on his life and at some level still influences him, he is very critical about Carnegie's methods...calling them manipulative at the least. Carnegie's acknowledged forerunner was Benjamin Franklin (see No. 3) and many of his best ideas, are drawn from the world's sacred scriptures. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That is the essential message of this book."
#11 August 28, 2012 The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
By Benjamin Spock, M.D>
First thing that caught my attention: I missed being raised by Dr. Spock by seven years. The book was published in 1946. I cannot recall seeing a copy of Dr. Spock's book in our house. Although I have to say that my Mother and Dad always respected me as an individual. I was shy by nature so a "child should be seen not heard" was not an issue in our house.
The statement by the author says it all: "Dr. Benjamin Spock changed how Americans raised their children, probably forever." It helped shape the Baby Boom generation, who are now ready for retirement. Before Spock most advice on the raising of children came from the pulpit, "spare the rod,spoil the child". Dr. Spock's main message to mothers: you know more than you think you do; follow your instincts. He wanted children to grow in ways that suited their individual personalities, and to make the most of their innate abilities. It is interesting that Dr. Spock for most of his life was a well-known and loved pediatrician, speaker, and author. However, somewhere in the 1960's he became a antiwar activist advocating nuclear disarmament. He took part in protest marches and was actually charged with conspiring "to sponsor and support a nation-wide program of resistance" to the draft. (Note: In 1973, after the Vietnam War Congress abolished the military draft in favor of an all volunteer Army.)
All I have heard about Dr. Spock was that his theories were responsible for a permissive age of self-centered/indulgent children who grew into self-centered/indulgent adults. However, Garry Wills, the writer who spent time in jail with him remembers: "Spock was the father not of a permissive age, but of an imaginative one. He had a respect for individuality, in babies as in grown citizens....He had come to protest war, not to wage it..."
#12 September 6, 2012 On the Road, Jack Kerouac
I really cannot relate in any way to this book. I think it is because I am part of the generation Mr. Kerouac defined as the "Beat Generation". In 1957 my generation had already been established and it wasn't 'beat'. I was part of the establishment and 'beat' wasn't part of it. I am not really sure even why Mr. Parini chose this book as one of the 'Thirteen Books. His first sentence was the only explanation: "'On The Road' (1957) identified, and helped to define, the notion of an American counterculture." He compared it as he some of the other books he has chosen as a rite of passage mainly for the male of the species. Also, Mr. Parini summarized the goal of this book as the search for IT. IT's the "search for enlightenment, for heightened consciousness, for God," which never ends. And finally, I think, most importantly, his last sentence says it all: "the going may well be more important than actually getting there." As a recent TV commercial trying to sell us cars says: The destination is the journey.
# 13 The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
Mr. Parini chose to include this book not because it was the only book that played a role in the women's movement, but because of the shock effect it had..."which almost single-handedly ignited a revolutionary phase that has deeply affected the live of countless American women and men." In my opinion, this movement is still evolving. Women are still trying to find their place in the greater scheme of things. I am not sure I will see it settled in my life time.
and...
You know,I really can't relate to this book any more than I can 'On the Road'. I never had a 'stay at home' mom. My Mom and Dad owned a small cafe before the time of franchise fast food drive-ins. They both worked from 4am to 9pm every day, except Sunday. They didn't close on Sunday until all of the church crowd was served. I didn't find out until I was in my 20's that job opportunities were limited for women. Actually, maybe the fact that I didn't have a 'stay at home' mom...I call it a 'Life with Father' mom...made me dream to be one. I always wanted my Mom to be there when I got home from school. I can remember laying a guilt trip on my Mom..."why can't you be at home with cookies and milk when I get home from school like the other moms"? ...I didn't even like milk:)
Want to read
August 18, 2023Charles and I got us early and let Alissa sleep. We had breakfast and went to a bookstore to buy some books to read on this trip. While we were there, the power went out in the store and the clerks didn’t know what to do to ring up the purchases. The manager reached under each counter and brought out a manual credit card machine. He showed each clerk how to use them and we were able to make our purchases. It was the kind of reader that I was used to so it was fun to watch the clerks struggle with them.
The 13 books are:
* Of Plymouth Plantation
* The Federalist Papers
* The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
* The Journals of Lewis and Clark
* Walden
* Uncle Tom’s Cabin
* Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
* The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. DuBois
* The Promised Land by Mary Anton
* How to Win Friends and Influence People
* The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
* On the Road
* The Feminine Mystique
All of the above are in this app.
There’s an appendix with 100 more titles that changed America
The 13 books are:
* Of Plymouth Plantation
* The Federalist Papers
* The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
* The Journals of Lewis and Clark
* Walden
* Uncle Tom’s Cabin
* Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
* The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. DuBois
* The Promised Land by Mary Anton
* How to Win Friends and Influence People
* The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
* On the Road
* The Feminine Mystique
All of the above are in this app.
There’s an appendix with 100 more titles that changed America
August 6, 2019
Rarely have I read books about books, but this one was an enjoyable survey of a collection of books which the author feels shaped, defined, or explored our national myths and the way we think about ourselves. For each work, he gave a brief introduction, a biography of the author, an in-depth discussion of the book itself, and thoughts as to its lasting impact.
I appreciated his discussion on each book in the context of its own time and ours; he doesn’t hold these to be the thirteen greatest works ever written, just that they showcase our history and character well. He also freely critiques each book in different ways. After reading this, I have a greater appreciation for how these works have shaped our past and explored what it means to be a part of our nation.
I appreciated his discussion on each book in the context of its own time and ours; he doesn’t hold these to be the thirteen greatest works ever written, just that they showcase our history and character well. He also freely critiques each book in different ways. After reading this, I have a greater appreciation for how these works have shaped our past and explored what it means to be a part of our nation.
April 9, 2022
This is a fabulous book, certainly one of the best I have read in several years. The structure is very effective - for each book, a brief biographical rendering of its author, a summary and analysis of the text, then, finally, a clear-headed explanation of the impact of the book on the people of America. The book picks up speed with each succeeding chapter, largely because of the author’s skillful weaving of the books with their predecessors. The author seasons the writing with his own life experiences without making the book about him. Particularly welcome are his recollections of his first exposures to the various books. Whether your bent is history, literature, sociology or philosophy, this will be a very enjoyable read for you.
April 25, 2022
اب أرض الميعاد ثلاثة عشر كتابا غيرت أمريكا جاي باريني PDF ، كتاب أرض الميعاد: ثلاثة عشر كتابا غيرت أمريكا pdf بقلم جاي باريني .. “يحتاج الأمريكيون إلى تذكير دوري بأنهم ، إلى حد كبير ، أشخاص من الكتاب – أو بالأحرى كتب. في أرض الميعاد ، يستعيد جاي باريني ذلك التراث الفكري
النابض بالحياة من خلال دراسة حياة وأوقات” ثلاثة عشر كتابًا غيرت أمريكا “. كان كل كتاب من الكتب بمثابة نقطة تحول ، حيث جمعت التيارات الفكرية التي كانت تتحرك بالفعل وتمثل تحولًا في الحياة والفكر الأمريكي. ولا يزال تأثيرهم واسع الانتشار ، مهما كان مخفيًا ، وفي مقالاته يوضح Parini كيف دخلت هذه الكتب الحياة الأمريكية وغيرت طريقة تفكيرنا والتصرف في العالم “.
النابض بالحياة من خلال دراسة حياة وأوقات” ثلاثة عشر كتابًا غيرت أمريكا “. كان كل كتاب من الكتب بمثابة نقطة تحول ، حيث جمعت التيارات الفكرية التي كانت تتحرك بالفعل وتمثل تحولًا في الحياة والفكر الأمريكي. ولا يزال تأثيرهم واسع الانتشار ، مهما كان مخفيًا ، وفي مقالاته يوضح Parini كيف دخلت هذه الكتب الحياة الأمريكية وغيرت طريقة تفكيرنا والتصرف في العالم “.
June 29, 2021
Well, I feel like I just finished an entire college semester studying American literature that shaped a country. ‘Promised Land ‘ is an analysis of our history intertwined with the books that influenced our history
July 8, 2017
Couldn't get into it.
March 5, 2010
[Published first at Blogcritics.org:]
"You know more than you think you do." So says an Olympic gold medal winner, and so begins a book that over sixty years later still influences the baby boomer generation. A book that espouses a kinder gentler approach to the journey from birth to adolescence. One of the founding myths/stories of our American heritage is the road trip. The story of two characters on a journey to freedom, either real or dreamed, the epitome of which, according to Hemingway, was penned by Mark Twain.
Since the Mayflower arrived in the New World, Americans have been on road trips. Whether it was the great unknown wilderness of Lewis and Clark or the quest for "it" as recounted by Kerouac, we've been searching. We learn from the journey and sometimes feel that when we have reached our destination, it stretches further out before us on the horizon. And we continue on. As individuals we continue the journey begun by our ancestors while seeking goals of our own along the way. Inspiration comes from our accomplishments and is driven by the efforts, desires, and dreams of previous generations passed along to us by oral family histories, diaries, journals, and books (both fiction and non-fiction).
A special collection of those books is celebrated in Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America by Jay Parini. The author teaches college in Vermont and has a long list of credits that add up to "literary scholar". He sees "..poetry as the most important form of writing," and has several collections of poetry, novels and biographies to his credit.
His selection criteria in his own words, "I was looking for books that played a role in shaping the nation's idea of itself or that consolidated and defined a major trend." It is clear that this is not a collection of America's "greatest books". Choosing could only be made less difficult by narrowing the focus; he includes a list of one hundred works that also changed the country with a confession that another hundred could have easily been added.
Parini has chosen his baker's dozen well. Included are significant works from politics, religion, adventure, exploration and philosophy. These books are filled with stories--memorable legends of both fact and fiction that describe our many interconnected journeys and the diverse experiences that make us Americans. He suggests questions to help us ponder the trip. His analysis inspires us to come up with our own questions. How could a country founded on the notion that all men are created equal allow slavery? (The Souls of Black Folk) How can we not be thought to be crazy or depraved when we push the boundaries of acceptable behavior? How can we change someone else's attitude without giving offense or arousing resentment? How could women not be allowed to vote? How much individual freedom are we willing to give up to be able to say we live in a free country?
A chapter is devoted to each book and treats each with the same format. He offers a brief summary of how the book changed the country. Next is a biography of the writer and historical context of the book. If you have not read the book, you will enjoy the third portion, a detailed description of the book. In some cases he details individual chapters. Despite this occasional level of detail, he manages to keep each chapter to approximately twenty pages. A discussion of the books that followed in the wake of the subject work concludes each section. In some cases, books that came before or inspired this particular work are mentioned.
Prior to reading this book I had never considered the importance of "the road trip". It was enlightening to see the diversity in the types of trips, the parallel motives and lessons learned along the way. The most memorable benefit of this book for me was the connections that came to mind while reading. Many of the stories reminded me of other books I've read on my own journey. I can ride on the raft with Huck and Tom, stand on the shore with Eliza, enjoy Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims or ride a chopper with Dennis Hopper. I can participate in my country's grand experiment in self-governing and I can speak with confidence in front of a group. Somehow it's easier to bear my own cross down the road to the promised land because of the journeys of my ancestors and mentors. The books chosen by Parini helped me to see that they, along with many other books I've enjoyed, have not only changed America, they have changed my generation, shaped my thoughts and made me who I am. I read not only to learn, I read to survive.
"You know more than you think you do." So says an Olympic gold medal winner, and so begins a book that over sixty years later still influences the baby boomer generation. A book that espouses a kinder gentler approach to the journey from birth to adolescence. One of the founding myths/stories of our American heritage is the road trip. The story of two characters on a journey to freedom, either real or dreamed, the epitome of which, according to Hemingway, was penned by Mark Twain.
Since the Mayflower arrived in the New World, Americans have been on road trips. Whether it was the great unknown wilderness of Lewis and Clark or the quest for "it" as recounted by Kerouac, we've been searching. We learn from the journey and sometimes feel that when we have reached our destination, it stretches further out before us on the horizon. And we continue on. As individuals we continue the journey begun by our ancestors while seeking goals of our own along the way. Inspiration comes from our accomplishments and is driven by the efforts, desires, and dreams of previous generations passed along to us by oral family histories, diaries, journals, and books (both fiction and non-fiction).
A special collection of those books is celebrated in Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America by Jay Parini. The author teaches college in Vermont and has a long list of credits that add up to "literary scholar". He sees "..poetry as the most important form of writing," and has several collections of poetry, novels and biographies to his credit.
His selection criteria in his own words, "I was looking for books that played a role in shaping the nation's idea of itself or that consolidated and defined a major trend." It is clear that this is not a collection of America's "greatest books". Choosing could only be made less difficult by narrowing the focus; he includes a list of one hundred works that also changed the country with a confession that another hundred could have easily been added.
Parini has chosen his baker's dozen well. Included are significant works from politics, religion, adventure, exploration and philosophy. These books are filled with stories--memorable legends of both fact and fiction that describe our many interconnected journeys and the diverse experiences that make us Americans. He suggests questions to help us ponder the trip. His analysis inspires us to come up with our own questions. How could a country founded on the notion that all men are created equal allow slavery? (The Souls of Black Folk) How can we not be thought to be crazy or depraved when we push the boundaries of acceptable behavior? How can we change someone else's attitude without giving offense or arousing resentment? How could women not be allowed to vote? How much individual freedom are we willing to give up to be able to say we live in a free country?
A chapter is devoted to each book and treats each with the same format. He offers a brief summary of how the book changed the country. Next is a biography of the writer and historical context of the book. If you have not read the book, you will enjoy the third portion, a detailed description of the book. In some cases he details individual chapters. Despite this occasional level of detail, he manages to keep each chapter to approximately twenty pages. A discussion of the books that followed in the wake of the subject work concludes each section. In some cases, books that came before or inspired this particular work are mentioned.
Prior to reading this book I had never considered the importance of "the road trip". It was enlightening to see the diversity in the types of trips, the parallel motives and lessons learned along the way. The most memorable benefit of this book for me was the connections that came to mind while reading. Many of the stories reminded me of other books I've read on my own journey. I can ride on the raft with Huck and Tom, stand on the shore with Eliza, enjoy Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims or ride a chopper with Dennis Hopper. I can participate in my country's grand experiment in self-governing and I can speak with confidence in front of a group. Somehow it's easier to bear my own cross down the road to the promised land because of the journeys of my ancestors and mentors. The books chosen by Parini helped me to see that they, along with many other books I've enjoyed, have not only changed America, they have changed my generation, shaped my thoughts and made me who I am. I read not only to learn, I read to survive.
December 7, 2016
Review title: And I believe in a promised land
Long before Springsteen, America was a land of belief, for some in a land promised by God, but more than that America was a land of belief in words. Perhaps unique and certainly preeminent among nations, America was founded on a belief in the power and effectiveness of the written word, starting from its Declaration of Independence and solidified in its written Constitution. Parini carries that belief forward by examining thirteen books that built on and sometimes challenged that belief in America's chosen status and unique position.
Mind you, these are not the thirteen best books written in or about America, Parini tells his readers, but the thirteen that most changed the country, starting in chronological order with two books that described colonial foundations (Of Plymouth Plantation) and articulated and argued for the new Constitution (The Federalist Papers). Many of these are books honored but not read by most Americans (although I didy study the Federalist Papers in my college coursework on government), but which still permeate the cultural, political, and linguistic atmosphere of the country by virtue of the centrality of their ideas and their influence on the words and actions of writers, politicians, and business and religious leaders.
Only two works of fiction are included among the thirteen, because no matter how widely read, it is difficult for fiction to have the same effectiveness for change, with
Uncle Tom's Cabin being the notable exception for its influence in galvanizing the abolitionist movement and helping ignite the American Civil War. Parini includes an appendix with 100 other titles which he considered for this list, amongst which are many other works of fiction. I found it useful to look back at this list as I was reading the main entry to read his thumbnail paragraph about the other books which were published just before and just after it. In fact, it would have been quite useful if these appendix titles were place amongst the thirteen in chronological order to more easily set the thirteen in context.
Also in the back are a few footnotes of Parini's references, but there is no index or bibliography of additional reading. Perhaps Parini chose to let these Thirteen stand on their own and serve as their own best references, but an index of authors, titles, and subjects would have been nice.
I started this review by referencing belief, in America's uniqueness and perfectability, which Parini's chosen books bolster with both reinforcement and criticism, particularly in those areas of race relations and gender equality where America's promise remains most distant from perfection. But even in its failures, America retains the promise of perfectability through the power of words and belief that enables me to turn from the worst of today's headlines, to realize that it ain't no sin to be glad I'm alive, and still to believe in a promised land. The Promised Land is in fact the title of one of Parini's chosen books, an immigrant memoir written by a young Russian Jewish woman who came to America in the early 20th century to escape the pogroms of her native land. As she wrote then to extol the virtues of her adopted country, so today millions still come to America to find their promised land based on the power of words and belief. Perhaps the next books that change America for good will come from among them.
Long before Springsteen, America was a land of belief, for some in a land promised by God, but more than that America was a land of belief in words. Perhaps unique and certainly preeminent among nations, America was founded on a belief in the power and effectiveness of the written word, starting from its Declaration of Independence and solidified in its written Constitution. Parini carries that belief forward by examining thirteen books that built on and sometimes challenged that belief in America's chosen status and unique position.
Mind you, these are not the thirteen best books written in or about America, Parini tells his readers, but the thirteen that most changed the country, starting in chronological order with two books that described colonial foundations (Of Plymouth Plantation) and articulated and argued for the new Constitution (The Federalist Papers). Many of these are books honored but not read by most Americans (although I didy study the Federalist Papers in my college coursework on government), but which still permeate the cultural, political, and linguistic atmosphere of the country by virtue of the centrality of their ideas and their influence on the words and actions of writers, politicians, and business and religious leaders.
Only two works of fiction are included among the thirteen, because no matter how widely read, it is difficult for fiction to have the same effectiveness for change, with
Uncle Tom's Cabin being the notable exception for its influence in galvanizing the abolitionist movement and helping ignite the American Civil War. Parini includes an appendix with 100 other titles which he considered for this list, amongst which are many other works of fiction. I found it useful to look back at this list as I was reading the main entry to read his thumbnail paragraph about the other books which were published just before and just after it. In fact, it would have been quite useful if these appendix titles were place amongst the thirteen in chronological order to more easily set the thirteen in context.
Also in the back are a few footnotes of Parini's references, but there is no index or bibliography of additional reading. Perhaps Parini chose to let these Thirteen stand on their own and serve as their own best references, but an index of authors, titles, and subjects would have been nice.
I started this review by referencing belief, in America's uniqueness and perfectability, which Parini's chosen books bolster with both reinforcement and criticism, particularly in those areas of race relations and gender equality where America's promise remains most distant from perfection. But even in its failures, America retains the promise of perfectability through the power of words and belief that enables me to turn from the worst of today's headlines, to realize that it ain't no sin to be glad I'm alive, and still to believe in a promised land. The Promised Land is in fact the title of one of Parini's chosen books, an immigrant memoir written by a young Russian Jewish woman who came to America in the early 20th century to escape the pogroms of her native land. As she wrote then to extol the virtues of her adopted country, so today millions still come to America to find their promised land based on the power of words and belief. Perhaps the next books that change America for good will come from among them.
October 13, 2009
In Promised Land, Jay Parini takes on an interesting endeavor: to identify books that described and/or shaped American cultural identity. Parini’s selections are: (1) Of Plymouth Plantation, (2) The Federalist Papers, (3) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, (4) The Journals of Lewis and Clark, (5) Walden, (6) Uncle Tom’s Cabin, (7) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, (8) The Souls of Black Folk, (9) The Promised Land, (10) How to Win Friends and Influence People, (11) The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, (12) On the Road, and (13) The Feminine Mystique.
In Parini’s view, each of these books conveys one or more well-wrought American tropes. We can choose various labels for these ideas: “myths”, “values”, “ideologies”, “beliefs”, “themes.” Terminological issues aside, these tropes are familiar to Americans. If we assume that, at some general level, there exists a shared American psyche then, to Parini, these books reflect important aspects of that psyche.
Some of Parini’s arguments are compelling. Parini effectively convinces readers (or me, at least) that William Bradford’s description of the Pilgrim story in Of Plymouth Plantation captures themes of “America as Promised Land”, “the immigrant experience”, and “cultural acceptance” (in this case, acceptance of Native Americans, as Bradford describes the first Thanksgiving). Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography captures themes of “American industriousness”, and “rugged individualism”, with their possibilities for “going from rags to riches.”
While there is no over-arching theme that binds all thirteen books, Parini does a good job of describing connections where they exist. Some themes cut across multiple works. For example, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and On The Road each, in their way, capture the romance of travel and the beckoning of the road to “find oneself.” Walden and On The Road both touch on counter-cultural themes. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Souls of Black Folk, and The Feminine Mystique each address prominent civil rights issues.
Parini attempts to convince readers that each of the books was widely influential. He cites statistics on book sales and distributions. He notes prominent persons who were influenced by one of his selections. Of course, no book is written in a vacuum. The influence of Parini’s selections may, in some instances, been partly predicated on their authors’ ability to effectively articulate pre-existing sentiments.
Parini’s choices show clear liberal predilections in language, tone, and, most obviously, his thirteen selections. Consistent with this, Parini seems drawn to books that fostered equality and civil rights (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Souls of Black Folk, The Feminine Mystique).
Parini writes his book in a very personal, conversational tone. He interjects personal experiences with several of the books. This style makes for a comfortable, casual read. Yet, it also placed Parini in a position where he could not assume knowledge on the part of his readers. If I have a critique of Promised Land, it is that Parini devotes a great of the book to recapitulative summaries of the thirteen books. This was a necessary shortcoming. Yet, I would have found the book more interesting if Parini had devoted less content to Cliff Notes style summarization, and more to expansion of his ideas.
In Parini’s view, each of these books conveys one or more well-wrought American tropes. We can choose various labels for these ideas: “myths”, “values”, “ideologies”, “beliefs”, “themes.” Terminological issues aside, these tropes are familiar to Americans. If we assume that, at some general level, there exists a shared American psyche then, to Parini, these books reflect important aspects of that psyche.
Some of Parini’s arguments are compelling. Parini effectively convinces readers (or me, at least) that William Bradford’s description of the Pilgrim story in Of Plymouth Plantation captures themes of “America as Promised Land”, “the immigrant experience”, and “cultural acceptance” (in this case, acceptance of Native Americans, as Bradford describes the first Thanksgiving). Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography captures themes of “American industriousness”, and “rugged individualism”, with their possibilities for “going from rags to riches.”
While there is no over-arching theme that binds all thirteen books, Parini does a good job of describing connections where they exist. Some themes cut across multiple works. For example, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and On The Road each, in their way, capture the romance of travel and the beckoning of the road to “find oneself.” Walden and On The Road both touch on counter-cultural themes. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Souls of Black Folk, and The Feminine Mystique each address prominent civil rights issues.
Parini attempts to convince readers that each of the books was widely influential. He cites statistics on book sales and distributions. He notes prominent persons who were influenced by one of his selections. Of course, no book is written in a vacuum. The influence of Parini’s selections may, in some instances, been partly predicated on their authors’ ability to effectively articulate pre-existing sentiments.
Parini’s choices show clear liberal predilections in language, tone, and, most obviously, his thirteen selections. Consistent with this, Parini seems drawn to books that fostered equality and civil rights (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Souls of Black Folk, The Feminine Mystique).
Parini writes his book in a very personal, conversational tone. He interjects personal experiences with several of the books. This style makes for a comfortable, casual read. Yet, it also placed Parini in a position where he could not assume knowledge on the part of his readers. If I have a critique of Promised Land, it is that Parini devotes a great of the book to recapitulative summaries of the thirteen books. This was a necessary shortcoming. Yet, I would have found the book more interesting if Parini had devoted less content to Cliff Notes style summarization, and more to expansion of his ideas.
March 8, 2009
Well, I WANTED to like this. I loved the premise of choosing 13 books that have influenced American culture. Anyone can quibble with which books to choose, I suppose, and I certainly do have quibbles with that. But this book, despite being well-written, is just so . . . well, wrong. It's wrong about a lot, and tries to sneak in political jabs left and right.
Just a smattering of the odd ideas of Parini:
The near-starvation of the Pilgrims when trying to farm communally, followed by the success of the reintroduction of private farming, does NOT give evidence against communism. ??
Here is a real boner--Thomas Jefferson was one of the principal architects of the US Constitution. I was so flabbergasted at that one that I nearly tossed the book. Glad I didn't as it's a library copy and I'd have had to pay for it. But really! How can you be THAT wrong? If you are going to try to comment upon literature and bring in discussions of politics and history, at least try to get the facts straight!!!! (For those who like Parini, did not know this--Thomas Jefferson was NOT present at the Philadelphia Convention, he was in Europe, and while he did correspond with many members of the Convention, especially Madison, it is a monstrous stretch to consider him an "architect" of the resulting Constitution at all, and howling mad to consider him the "principal architect"
Want to guess in how many of these "literary" selections Parini managed to get in anti-Bush jabs? (My count: TEN out of thirteen. Then there is the chapter in which he raves about Bill Clinton.)
I could go down my list of ridiculous statements all day, but I think I'll just end this with a warning that the chapter on Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" is obscene (I guess it's hard to help it considering that the book is obscene) and Parini manages to ascribe "homoeroticism" to a wide panoply of characters in a number of the book selections.
Skip this one and hope that someone who actually knows something can take this otherwise good idea and make it work.
Just a smattering of the odd ideas of Parini:
The near-starvation of the Pilgrims when trying to farm communally, followed by the success of the reintroduction of private farming, does NOT give evidence against communism. ??
Here is a real boner--Thomas Jefferson was one of the principal architects of the US Constitution. I was so flabbergasted at that one that I nearly tossed the book. Glad I didn't as it's a library copy and I'd have had to pay for it. But really! How can you be THAT wrong? If you are going to try to comment upon literature and bring in discussions of politics and history, at least try to get the facts straight!!!! (For those who like Parini, did not know this--Thomas Jefferson was NOT present at the Philadelphia Convention, he was in Europe, and while he did correspond with many members of the Convention, especially Madison, it is a monstrous stretch to consider him an "architect" of the resulting Constitution at all, and howling mad to consider him the "principal architect"
Want to guess in how many of these "literary" selections Parini managed to get in anti-Bush jabs? (My count: TEN out of thirteen. Then there is the chapter in which he raves about Bill Clinton.)
I could go down my list of ridiculous statements all day, but I think I'll just end this with a warning that the chapter on Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" is obscene (I guess it's hard to help it considering that the book is obscene) and Parini manages to ascribe "homoeroticism" to a wide panoply of characters in a number of the book selections.
Skip this one and hope that someone who actually knows something can take this otherwise good idea and make it work.
April 14, 2016
The “Promised Land Thirteen Books that Changed America” is a contemporary review not of America’s greatest fiction or nonfiction works, but a listing and review of books that shaped, changed or “played a role in our nation’s idea of itself or defined a major trend.” A key aspect of Jay Parini’s book is exploring national myths. Each chapter of his book is organized in four parts to help readers see America today in a framework of that particular time.
• Perception about the importance to America / ways it changed or forged our identity
• Information about the author / historical context about the work
• Detailed description of work
• Legacy of the work
In his introduction, Parini reported he chose the topic of his book after attending a similar reading of “Twelve Books that Changed the World” by British author Lord Melvyn Bragg.
Parini tackles what our past means to us now. The book’s dominant themes are relevant today during the 2016 election year:
• Immigration
• Assimilation
• Religion
• Independence from old world constraints /values – American values
• Capacity for self-invention
• Enlightenment that shaped laws
• Vision of nature
• Racial integration
• Conflicts when ideas (cultures) collide
• Continuous revolution through self-transformation
Parini’s history of William Bradford’s diaries adds to and debunks the mythic status Americans have bestowed on the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. Bradford gives some of the first Americans a heroic status, while exposing the pettiness, selfishness and greed of the settlers.
Mythical aspects
• Plymouth wasn’t the first settlement in the New World (pg. 27)
o Jamestown 1607
o St. Augustine 1565 – slavery introduce here first
• Jamestown collapsed into chaos (described by John Smith in 1624 “General History of Virginia”
• Relations with Native Americans not always positive (pg. 27)
• Edmund Morgan attributed the failure to poor work habits “Labor Problems @ Jamestown” (pg. 27)
The author describes William Bradford’s “Of Plymouth Plantation” as a “brilliant literary text” and a “tribute to patient diplomacy and restraint.”
• Perception about the importance to America / ways it changed or forged our identity
• Information about the author / historical context about the work
• Detailed description of work
• Legacy of the work
In his introduction, Parini reported he chose the topic of his book after attending a similar reading of “Twelve Books that Changed the World” by British author Lord Melvyn Bragg.
Parini tackles what our past means to us now. The book’s dominant themes are relevant today during the 2016 election year:
• Immigration
• Assimilation
• Religion
• Independence from old world constraints /values – American values
• Capacity for self-invention
• Enlightenment that shaped laws
• Vision of nature
• Racial integration
• Conflicts when ideas (cultures) collide
• Continuous revolution through self-transformation
Parini’s history of William Bradford’s diaries adds to and debunks the mythic status Americans have bestowed on the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving. Bradford gives some of the first Americans a heroic status, while exposing the pettiness, selfishness and greed of the settlers.
Mythical aspects
• Plymouth wasn’t the first settlement in the New World (pg. 27)
o Jamestown 1607
o St. Augustine 1565 – slavery introduce here first
• Jamestown collapsed into chaos (described by John Smith in 1624 “General History of Virginia”
• Relations with Native Americans not always positive (pg. 27)
• Edmund Morgan attributed the failure to poor work habits “Labor Problems @ Jamestown” (pg. 27)
The author describes William Bradford’s “Of Plymouth Plantation” as a “brilliant literary text” and a “tribute to patient diplomacy and restraint.”
May 11, 2012
The book is a discussion and analysis of 13 books that the author argues changed America (i.e. what became the United States) in some way. The author picked out the thirteen books on the basis of how they illustrate the American character and the myths of the nation: values like self-reliance, self-invention, founding myths, race relations, so on.
The chapters have a very simple structure for each book presented in this work: an overview of the book; a look at the book's author or authors; description and summary of the work itself, and finally a statement on the book's influence over time with some mentions of other books that should be considered alongside the book being considered in a chapter. The book includes an appendix of 100 other books that the author considers important.
For me, the book was just ok. It is an academic tome, and I say that with the negative connotation that saying "academic tome" often carries: a dry book that is not very engaging to the casual reader. It reads a bit like a textbook. I can see this book being assigned in some American literature survey in college or a similar class. Also, I did not find as engaging because a lot of the stuff he was discussing I already knew about. I read a good number of the books he is discussing when I was in graduate school, so for me at least, I did not need to take the trip down memory lane again for things I had already discussed when I was in graduate school. However, if you are not familiar with the works described, and he does argue that the works should be read (or reread) once in a while to get a sense of the American myth and culture, this may be a book to pick up to at least get acquainted with things like The Federalist Papers or Uncle Tom's Cabin.
The chapters have a very simple structure for each book presented in this work: an overview of the book; a look at the book's author or authors; description and summary of the work itself, and finally a statement on the book's influence over time with some mentions of other books that should be considered alongside the book being considered in a chapter. The book includes an appendix of 100 other books that the author considers important.
For me, the book was just ok. It is an academic tome, and I say that with the negative connotation that saying "academic tome" often carries: a dry book that is not very engaging to the casual reader. It reads a bit like a textbook. I can see this book being assigned in some American literature survey in college or a similar class. Also, I did not find as engaging because a lot of the stuff he was discussing I already knew about. I read a good number of the books he is discussing when I was in graduate school, so for me at least, I did not need to take the trip down memory lane again for things I had already discussed when I was in graduate school. However, if you are not familiar with the works described, and he does argue that the works should be read (or reread) once in a while to get a sense of the American myth and culture, this may be a book to pick up to at least get acquainted with things like The Federalist Papers or Uncle Tom's Cabin.
August 8, 2012
A family member recently received a Kindle as a gift and was eager to show it to me. He was confused when I ran kicking and screaming from the room (I exaggerate only a little). Is nothing sacred? Does everything on this beautiful place we call Earth have to be completely technological? Is the closing of libraries and bookstores right around the corner?
Books have been around forever, not the "download this bestseller for $7.99 kind", but the good, old-fashioned, "turn-the-page" kind. Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America is not your average "Best Books Ever" list. There is no The Fountainhead in sight. What Parini does do is come up with a very interesting list of books that, when introduced to popular culture, changed life as we know it. When Harriet Beecher Stowe met Abraham Lincoln after the release of Uncle Tom's Cabin, he is famously quoted as saying "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!" In addition, who can argue that Dr. Benjamin Spock changed child rearing as we know it when he published his The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care?
This is the kind of book you can pick up in March and finish in June. It will not appeal to everybody (I can't see the average American going into Barnes & Noble and picking up a copy of The Federalist Papers), but it is fine reading for those who love literary history.
MY RATING - 4
See this review on 1776books.net...
http://1776books.blogspot.com/2010/03...
Books have been around forever, not the "download this bestseller for $7.99 kind", but the good, old-fashioned, "turn-the-page" kind. Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America is not your average "Best Books Ever" list. There is no The Fountainhead in sight. What Parini does do is come up with a very interesting list of books that, when introduced to popular culture, changed life as we know it. When Harriet Beecher Stowe met Abraham Lincoln after the release of Uncle Tom's Cabin, he is famously quoted as saying "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!" In addition, who can argue that Dr. Benjamin Spock changed child rearing as we know it when he published his The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care?
This is the kind of book you can pick up in March and finish in June. It will not appeal to everybody (I can't see the average American going into Barnes & Noble and picking up a copy of The Federalist Papers), but it is fine reading for those who love literary history.
MY RATING - 4
See this review on 1776books.net...
http://1776books.blogspot.com/2010/03...
January 18, 2012
Interesting and provocative book by Parini about the 13 books that he thinks most changed America.
His list: Of Plymouth Plantation, by William Bradford; The Federalist Papers, by Hamilton, Madison & Monroe; The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by himself; The Journals of Lewis & Clark, by them; Walden, by Thoreau; Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain; The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. DuBois; The Promised Land, by Mary Antin; How to Win Friends & Influence People, by Dale Carnegie; The Common Sense Book of Baby & Child Care, by Dr. Spock; On The Road, by Jack Kerouac; and The Feminine Mystique, by Germaine Greer.
Each books gets its own chapter & each chapter has 4 parts: why Parini believes the book merits inclusion on the list; info about the author & his/her writing of the book; a detailed analysis of each book; and an explanation of what happened after the book was published & how its subsequent influence.
I had previously read 9 of these 13 books, and am now likely to read the rest (with the exception of Carnegie's book). You may debate his inclusion of one or more of these, but that's what makes this meta-book provocative. At the end he's got a list of another 100 influential books that he thought long & hard about including, but chose not to.
His list: Of Plymouth Plantation, by William Bradford; The Federalist Papers, by Hamilton, Madison & Monroe; The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, by himself; The Journals of Lewis & Clark, by them; Walden, by Thoreau; Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain; The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. DuBois; The Promised Land, by Mary Antin; How to Win Friends & Influence People, by Dale Carnegie; The Common Sense Book of Baby & Child Care, by Dr. Spock; On The Road, by Jack Kerouac; and The Feminine Mystique, by Germaine Greer.
Each books gets its own chapter & each chapter has 4 parts: why Parini believes the book merits inclusion on the list; info about the author & his/her writing of the book; a detailed analysis of each book; and an explanation of what happened after the book was published & how its subsequent influence.
I had previously read 9 of these 13 books, and am now likely to read the rest (with the exception of Carnegie's book). You may debate his inclusion of one or more of these, but that's what makes this meta-book provocative. At the end he's got a list of another 100 influential books that he thought long & hard about including, but chose not to.
April 12, 2010
I love lists, and it was interesting to see which books the author chose as being the most influential, especially in relation to the other books he was considering. Those picks of books with a little analysis actually might have made a great essay. As it was, a large part of each chapter was devoted to summary, such that I felt like I was reading a cliff notes version of each book in between the reasons why it was influential. This was especially painful for the books I already knew something about (Autobiography of Ben Franklin, Walden, The Souls of Black Folk, On the Road, The Feminine Mystique) but even for the books I didn't know, it was uninspiring. Also, there wasn't even a whole lot of depth in the parts about the influence of each book. It was written in a regimented way, with every chapter split into 4 sections, each of which had a specific purpose, and I sort of felt like I was reading a textbook instead of an engaging piece of nonfiction. My favorite parts were the parts about How to Win Friends and Influence People and The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, but I think I could have learned a bit about these books just as easily elsewhere.
December 7, 2012
Although the author focusses on only 13 books, he often refers to and quotes several other related (or in the time period) books. I had read several of the books and, although some might object to the author spending so many pages on summaries, it was necessary because he mixed in stories and historical and sociological context within each section of a book. He goes on to explain how the book and subsequent books inspired by a particular book went on to affect the developing US. He also often gives commentary on what is happening now compared with what a particular book said long ago. One example: in discussing the Federalist Papers he noted that George Mason (if I am remembering correctly) gave many objections to the new Constitution especially as it related to the presidency, particularly that, eventually, the president would exceed the authority granted in the constitution in several subtle ways (i.e. think Executive Orders which seem to become "laws" (or actions) without congressional approval) or declare war without congressional approval. This has happened as predicted long ago.
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