July 4 Reading List

While celebrating the nation's birthday w/mixed-martial arts, the renewal of the East Wing, the removal of DEI everywhere, & the refurbishing of the reflecting pool w/fresh algae, here's a list of books etc that came to mind while dozing off -- additional suggestions welcome! (but my personal list is an aide-memoire for items in my collection already read/could be re-read, or that I would like to read, or which I already have on my wishlist). Alphabetical by author. Added an asterisk to titles I've read; the others represent hope to's.

• The Education of Henry Adams / Henry Adams


• Let Us Now Praise Famous Men / James Agee & Walker Evans


• A Religious History of the American People / Sydney Ahlstrom*
  


• Little Women / Louisa May Alcott*


• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness / Michelle Alexander


• Akhil Reed Amar




• America's Constitution: A Biography


• America's unwritten constitution : the precedents and principles we live by


• The Bill of Rights : creation and reconstruction




• Band of Brothers : E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest / Stephen E. Ambrose*


• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (I have an older hardcover edition on my reference shelf)


• The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms: American English Idiomatic Expressions & Phrases (compiling this list reminded me that it's on my Kindle)


• Collected Poems 1951-1971 / A.R. Ammons


• Roommates: My Grandfather's Story / Max Apple*


• Louis Armstrong, In His Own Words: Selected Writings ed Thomas Brothers


• John Ashbery:




• A Nest of Ninnies*


• River and Mountains*


• Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror*




• The New York Trilogy / Paul Auster* (permeated w/ the ghost of Hawthorne, so my Hawthorne substitute)


• James Baldwin : Collected Essays : Notes of a Native Son / Nobody Knows My Name / The Fire Next Time / No Name in the Street / The Devil Finds Work / Other Essays (Library of America) / James Baldwin, ed Toni Morrison


• Leigh Bardugo:




• Ninth House (Alex Stern Book 1)*


• Hell Bent: A Novel (Ninth House Series Book 2)*




• The Sot-Weed Factor / John Barth*


• Hollywood: The Oral History / Jeanine Basinger & Sam Wasson*


• L. Frank Baum:




• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (The Oz Series Book 1)* (read it more than once but don't own a copy; still reading my way through the books in this series)


• The Marvelous Land of Oz*




• The Adventures of Augie March (Everyman's Library) / Saul Bellow*


• John Berryman:




• 77 Dream Songs*


• His toy, his dream, his rest; 308 dream songs




• American Prometheus: the triumph and tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer / Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin


• Elizabeth Bishop




• Poems / Elizabeth Bishop; ed Saskia Hamilton


• One Art: Letters of Elizabeth Bishop / ed Robert Giroux




• The American religion : the emergence of the post-Christian nation / Harold Bloom*


• Fahrenheit 451 / Ray Bradbury*


• Taylor Branch:




• Parting the Waters : America in the King Years 1954-63*


• Pillar of Fire : America in the King Years 1963-65 (America in the King Years)*


• At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 (America in the King Years)*




• Van Wyck Brooks:
  
  
  
  • The flowering of New England, 1815-1865
  
  
  • New England: Indian Summer, 1865-1915
  
  
  • The Times of Melville and Whitman
  
  
  
  
• Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century / Jessica Bruder*


• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail / Bill Bryson*


• Naked Lunch, 1st Edition (An Evergreen Black Cat Book) / William S. Burroughs*


• Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (The History of New York City) / Edwin G. Burrows & Mike Wallace


• Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Studies in Cultural History) / Jon Butler


• In Cold Blood / Truman Capote*


• Robert A. Caro:




• The power broker : Robert Moses and the fall of New York*


• Master Of The Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson




• Raymond Carver: Collected Stories (Library of America) / Raymond Carver*


• Willa Cather:




• My Antonia*


• O Pioneers!*




• Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis / Jack Chambers


• Farewell, my lovely, & The lady in the lake / Raymond Chandler*


• The Stories of John Cheever*


• Alexander Hamilton / Ron Chernow


• Mary Chesnut's Civil War / ed C. Vann Woodward


• The Beans of Egypt, Maine: The Finished Version / Carolyn Chute*


• Ta Nehisi-Coates:




• Between the World and Me*


• We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy*




• James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales I; The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, The Prairie (Library of America)


• Guard of Honor / James Gould Cozzens*


• Hart Crane Complete Poems and Selected Letters / ed Langdon Hammer


• Crane: Prose and Poetry (Library of America) / Stephen Crane


• William Cronon:




• Changes in the Land, Revised Edition: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (unread & in remote storage!)


• Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West




• No offense : civil religion and Protestant taste / John Murray Cuddihy*


• Columbine / Dave Cullen


• Mike Davis:




• City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (Essential Mike Davis)


• Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster




• Nicholas Dawidoff:




• In the Country of Country: A Journey to the Roots of American Music*


• The Other Side of Prospect: A Story of Violence, Injustice, and the American City




• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City / Matthew Desmond


• James Dickey:




• James Dickey: Poems 1957-1967*


• Deliverance




• Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries / Emily Dickinson w/commentary by Helen Vendler


• We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (Everyman's Library) / Joan Didion


• Ragtime / E.L. Doctorow*


• Lincoln / David Herbert Donald


• USA (The 42nd Parallel / 1919 / The Big Money) / John Dos Passos (Library of America)


• An American Tragedy / Theodore Dreiser*


• W.E.B. Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk (Library of America Paperback Classics)


• Vegas: a memoir of a dark season / John Gregory Dunne*


• 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers / Jim Dwyer & Kevin Flynn


• A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story / Dave Eggers*


• Invisible Man / Ralph Ellison*


• Ralph Waldo Emerson:




• Ralph Waldo Emerson : Essays & Poems (Library of America College Editions) / ed Joel Porte, Harold Bloom & Paul Kane


• The Heart of Emerson's Journals




• Snobbery: The American Version / Joseph Epstein*


• The Night Watchman: A Novel / Louise Erdrich


• William Faulkner:




• Absalom, Absalom!*


• Collected Stories of William Faulkner*


• Light in August*


• The Portable Faulkner*


• The Sound and the Fury*




• Federalist papers: tip of the hat to >3 gilroy:




• The Federalist Papers (Signet Classics)


• The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates (Signet Classics)




• Love and Death in the American Novel / Leslie A. Fiedler*


• The Great Gatsby / F. Scott Fitzgerald*


• I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated History of American Words and Phrases / Stuart Berg Flexner


• Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New American Nation Series) / Eric Foner


• Shelby Foote: (the trilogy is immensely readable -- I finished it over a long Thanksgiving break years ago, but I prefer the James McPherson 1 volume, because more context)




• The Civil War: A Narrative--Fort Sumter to Perryville, Vol. 1*


• The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian*


• The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 3 Red River to Appomattox*




• Lawrence M. Friedman:




• A History of American Law (Touchstone Books)


• American Law in the Twentieth Century




• City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940's / Otto Friedrich*


• The poetry of Robert Frost / ed Edward Connery Lathem


• Class: a guide through the American status system / Paul Fussell*


• The recognitions, a novel / William Gaddis*


• G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century / Beverly Gage (ebook)


• John Ford: The Man and His Films / Tag Gallagher


• The American City : What Works, What Doesn't / Alexander Garvin


• The William H. Gass Reader


• Colored People: a memoir / Henry Louis Gates Jr.*


• Gary Giddins




• Visions of Jazz: The First Century


• Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century




• Many Masks: The Life of Frank Lloyd Wright / Brendan Gill


• Howl and Other Poems / Allen Ginsberg*


• The Movies, Mr. Griffith & Me / Lillian Gish & Ann Pinchot


• Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman / James Gleick*


• Poems 1962-2012 / Louise Glück


• The Crucial Decade - and After: America, 1945-1960 / Eric Goldman*


• Good Luck Life: The Essential Guide to Chinese American Celebrations and Culture / Rosemary Gong


• Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters / Robert Gordon


• Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs & Selected Letters (LOA #50) / ed Mary D. & William S. McFeely


• A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910 (The Penguin History of the United States) / Steven Hahn


• David Halberstam




• The Best and the Brightest*


• The Fifties*




• Roots (Dell Book) / Alex Haley*


• Pekka Hämäläinen:




• The Comanche Empire (The Lamar Series in Western History)


• Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America




• Robert Lowell : a biography / Ian Hamilton*


• The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story / Nikole Hannah-Jones*


• The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick ed Darryl Pinckney


• The Making of the Wizard of Oz: Movie Magic and Studio Power in the Prime of MGM / Aljean Harmetz*


• High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America / Jessica B. Harris


• Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups / ed Stephen Thernstrom, Ann Orlov, Oscar Handlin


• Movie Love in the Fifties / James Harvey*


• Nathaniel Hawthorne:




• The Scarlet Letter (Norton Critical)*


• The Blithedale Romance*


• Nathaniel Hawthorne: Selected Tales and Sketches (Rinehart editions, 33)




• The short stories of Ernest Hemingway*


• George V. Higgins




• The Friends of Eddie Coyle*


• The Digger's Game*


• Cogan's Trade*




• Cultural literacy : what every American needs to know / E.D. Hirsch*


• Richard Hofstadter:




• The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It*


• Anti-Intellectualism in American Life*




• Nisei: The Quiet Americans / Bill Hosokawa*


• Farewell to Manzanar: a true story of Japanese American experience during and after the World War II Internment / Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston & James D. Houston


• What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford History of the United States) / Daniel Walker Howe


• World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made / Irving Howe


• American visions : the epic history of art in America / Robert Hughes


• Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Novel / Zora Neale Hurston*


• John Irving:




• The world according to Garp : a novel*


• The Cider House Rules*




• Walter Isaacson:




• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (ebook)


• Steve Jobs (ebook)




• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl / Harriet Jacobs (ebook)


• The Death and Life of Great American Cities / Jane Jacobs


• Henry James:




• The American


• The Bostonians*


• Portrait of a Lady*


• The Wings of the Dove*




• Notes on the state of Virginia / Thomas Jefferson


• The Known World: A Novel / Edward P. Jones (on the Guardian top 100)


• The Age of Energy : Varieties of American Experience, 1865-1915 / Howard Mumford Jones


• From Here to Eternity (The World War II Trilogy Book 1)* / James Jones


• White over black : American attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 / Winthrop D. Jordan


• The Boys of Summer / Roger Kahn*


• The Pound Era / Hugh Kenner*


• On the Road / Jack Kerouac*


• China Men / Maxine Hong Kingston*


• Henry Kissinger:




• White House years


• Years of upheaval




• Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality / Richard Kluger*


• Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family / Robert Kolker


• What It Takes: The Way to the White House / Richard Ben Kramer


• The Ecological Indian: Myth and History / Shepard Krech


• The Reader's encyclopedia of the American West / Howard Lamar


• Helen And Teacher: The Story Of Helen Keller And Anne Sullivan Macy (Radcliffe Biography Series) / Joseph P. Lash


• Studies in Classic American Literature / D.H. Lawrence


• The Making of Asian America: A History / Erika Lee


• To Kill a Mockingbird / Harper Lee*


• These Truths: A History of the United States / Jill Lepore*


• You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn / Wendy Lesser


• David Levering Lewis:




• W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868–1919: Biography of a Race (ebook recently downloaded)


• W. E. B. Du Bois, 1919-1963: The Fight for Equality and the American Century (trade pbk)




• The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West / Patricia Nelson Limerick


• Leon F. Litwack:




• Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery*


• Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow*




• H. P. Lovecraft: Tales (Library of America)


• Robert Lowell:




• Lord Weary's castle ; and, The mills of the Kavanaughs*


• Life studies, and For the Union dead*


• Words in air : the complete correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell




• Under the Volcano / Malcolm Lowry*


• Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families / J. Anthony Lukas*


• Stanwyck: A Biography / Axel Madsen


• Norman Mailer:




• The Armies of the Night: History as a Novel, the Novel as History*


• The Executioner's Song*




• Jefferson and his Time (6 v) / Dumas Malone


• Charles C. Mann:




• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus*


• 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created*




• Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music / Greil Marcus*


• The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America (Galaxy Books) / Leo Marx*


• American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman / F.O. Matthiessen


• Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul / James McBride*


• Blood Meridian / Cormac McCarthy*


• David McCullough:




• John Adams


• Truman*




• George Cukor: A Double Life / Patrick McGilligan


• Lonesome Dove : a novel / Larry McMurtry*


• A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead / Dennis Mcnally*


• Coming into the country / John McPhee (Alaska)*


• Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States) / James M. McPherson*


• American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House / Jon Meacham


• Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company / James R. Mellow*


• Herman Melville:




• Moby-Dick (Norton Critical Edition)*


• Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales (Oxford World's Classics)*


• The confidence-man: his masquerade ed. H. Bruce Franklin*




• Louis Menand:
  
  
  
  • The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War*
  
  
  • The Metaphysical Club: a story of ideas in America*
  
  
  
  
• H. L. Mencken:




• The American language : an inquiry into the development of English in the United States


• A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing




• James Merrill:




• Divine Comedies: poems*


• From the first nine : poems, 1946-1976


• The changing light at Sandover




• Hawaii: A Novel / James A. Michener*


• Tropic of Cancer / Henry Miller*


• Perry Miller:




• New England Mind the Seventeenth Century


• New England Mind from Colony to Province




• Up in the Old Hotel / Joseph Mitchell*


• Gone with the Wind / Margaret Mitchell*


• Marianne Moore: Collected Poems


• Rise of Theodore Roosevelt / Edmund Morris


• Beloved / Toni Morrison*


• Albert Murray: Collected Essays & Memoirs: The Omni-Americans / South to a Very Old Place / The Hero and the Blues / Stomping the Blues / The Blue Devils of Nada (The Library of America) / ed Henry Gates Jr & Paul Devlin


• Vladimir Nabokov:




• The Annotated Lolita / Alfred Apple, editor; read this in another edition but not this one


• Pale fire; a novel*


• Pnin*


• The Nabokov-Wilson Letters: Correspondence Between Vladimir Nabokov and Edmund Wilson 1940-1971 ed Simon Karlinsky




• A Turn in the South / V.S. Naipaul


• Longtime Californ'; a documentary study of an American Chinatown / Victor Nee & Brett de Bary Nee


• A New Literary History of America (Harvard University Press Reference Library) / editors Greil Marcus & Werner Sollers


• Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875 / Barbara Novak


• Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance / Barack Obama*


• Flannery O'Connor : Collected Works : Wise Blood / A Good Man Is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear It Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays & Letters (Library of America) / Flannery O'Connor


• Mormon America: The Power and the Promise / Richard & Joan Ostling*


• The road to Miltown; or, Under the spreading atrophy / S.J. Perelman*


• Rick Perlstein:
  
  
  
  • Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
  
  
  • Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America*
  
  
  • The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
  
  
  • Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980
    
  
  
• South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation / Imani Perry*


• The Bell Jar / Sylvia Plath*


• Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance / Robert Pirsig*


• Selected Prose, Poetry, and Eureka / Edgar Allen Poe*


• Pollyanna: Complete and Unabridged (Puffin Classics) / Eleanor Porter


• Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Three Short Novels: A Library of America eBook Classic / Katherine Anne Porter*


• True Grit / Charles Portis*


• New Selected Poems and Translations (Second Edition) (New Directions Paperbook) / Ezra Pound


• Mason & Dixon / Thomas Pynchon (tbr; might change my mind)


• City: Urbanism and Its End (The Institution for Social and Policy St) / Douglas W. Rae*


• Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography / David S. Reynolds (currently reading ebook)


• Housekeeping: A Novel / Marilynne Robinson*


• Hunger of memory : the education of Richard Rodriguez : an autobiography / Richard Rodriguez*


• Joy of Cooking / Irma S. Rombauer (don't own or plan to own a copy, but I've consulted my late mother's copy back in the day)


• Philip Roth:




• American Pastoral*


• The Plot Against America: a novel*


• Portnoy's Complaint*




• A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America / Philip Rucker & Carol Leonig*


• A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century / Witold Rybczynski (supposedly in my bedroom)


• The Catcher in the Rye / J.D. Salinger*


• Low life : lures and snares of old New York / Luc Sante


• The American cinema : directors and directions 1929-1968 / Andrew Sarris*


• Arthur M. Schlesinger:




• The Age of Roosevelt


• A thousand days; John F. Kennedy in the White House




• Gunther Schuller:




• Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (History of Jazz)*


• The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz 1930-1945




• The Golden Gate: a novel in verse / Vikram Seth*


• Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race / Margot Lee Shetterly


• Leslie Marmon Silko:




• Ceremony: (Penguin Orange Collection)


• The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel




• The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood / David Simon & Edward Burns


• Gunfighter Nation: Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America / Richard Slotkin


• A Thousand Acres / Jane Smiley*


• The Greenlanders / Jane Smiley* (historical novel about the future 51st state)


• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn / Betty Smith*


• Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Harvard Paperback, Hp 21) / Henry Nash Smith


• Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell / Deborah Solomon


• John Steinbeck*




• The Grapes of Wrath*


• East of Eden*


• Travels with Charley* (ebook)




• The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play / Wallace Steven, ed Holly Stevens I consult this selection -- esp in ebook, my 3rd copy -- more than Wallace Stevens : collected poetry and prose (Library of America) / Wallace Stevens


• Names on the Land. A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States / George R. Stewart


• The Help / Kathryn Stockett*


• Uncle Tom's Cabin / Harriet Beecher Stowe


• Olive Kitteridge / Elizabeth Strout


• Raise the Roof: The Inspiring Inside Story of the Tennessee Lady Vols' Groundbreaking Season in Women's College Basketball / Pat Summitt w/Sally Jenkins (the Lady Vols were the chief rivals of the UConn Women's teams; Sally Jenkins was a senior sports correspondent who was part of the recent WaPo layoffs)


• Henry David Thoreau:




• A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers ; Walden, or, Life in the woods ; The Maine woods ; Cape Cod (Library of America)* (except Cape Cod; the LoA volume lacks "Civil Disobedience"* readily available from other sources


• The Journals of Henry David Thoreau: 1837-1861 (New York Review Books Classics)




• Writings and drawings (Library of America) / James Thurber


• Alexis de Tocqueville: Democracy in America (LOA #147): A new translation by Arthur Goldhammer (Library of America)


• Calvin Trillin




• American Fried*


• Alice Let's Eat*


• Third Helpings*




• Mark Twain:




• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. An Annotated Text. Backgrounds and Sources. Essays in Criticism. (Norton Critical Editions)*


• Life on the Mississippi (The World's Best Reading)




• John Updike (the American dad novelist):




• Rabbit, Run*


• Rabbit Redux*


• Rabbit at Rest*


• Rabbit Is Rich*




• Gore Vidal:




• Lincoln: A Novel*


• Palimpsest: A Memoir*




• The Dying Grass: A Novel of the Nez Perce War / William T. Vollmann


• Infinite Jest / David Foster Wallace (might take this off once I get around to reading it; we'll see)


• Andy Warhol:




• The Andy Warhol Diaries / Pat Hackett, editor


• The philosophy of Andy Warhol : from A to B and back again*




• All the king's men / Robert Penn Warren*


• Eudora Welty




• Eudora Welty : Stories, Essays & Memoir (Library of America, 102)


• Thirteen stories*




• Edith Wharton:




• The Age of Innocence*


• The House of Mirth*




• The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States) / Richard White


• The Underground Railroad / Colson Whitehead*


• American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 / Alec Wilder*


• The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln / Sean Wilentz


• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration / Isabel Wilkerson


• Miami Blues / Charles Willeford*


• Stoner / John Williams*


• William Carlos Williams:




• William Carlos Williams : Selected Poems with an introduction by Randall Jarrell*


• Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems*




• Garry Wills:




• Explaining America: The Federalist


• Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence


• Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America was: wishlist; now: downloaded!


• Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man*




• Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War / Edmund Wilson*


• Twentieth-Century American Architecture: The Buildings and Their Makers / Carter Wiseman


• Tom Wolfe:




• The Bonfire of the Vanities*


• The Right Stuff*


• I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel*




• Native Son / Richard Wright


• The Autobiography of Malcolm X*


• Revolutionary Road / Richard Yates

American Philosophers to celebrate: >7 featherbear:
Wishlist >8 featherbear:

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha Jones!

I recommend The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 by Dr Manisha Sinha a lot, too.

Megan Kate Nelson's The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier is on my reading list (soon...)

I saw these two in the UCP and UWP sales this week, and am adding them to my list, too:

• Claude S. Fischer - Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character

• Flannery Burke - Back East: How Westerners Invented a Region

I'm very interested in "What is American?"/"How to be American" after reading so many old children's books, and related to that, the mythmaking of the American Identity. :) (American Civic Religion is the term used to talk about it, in some aspects anyway)

I suppose Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ought to be included, too, but I'm not sure of a good edition. If anyone can suggest one, please do!

A valuable picture book: This Land, text by Ashley Fairbanks (Anishinaabe)

The Federalist Papers
The Anti-Federalist Papers
Common Sense

New books to celebrate, an omnium gatherum:

David Waldstreicher. Boston Review, spring 2026: The Spirit of ’76: What is living and what is dead in our memory of the American Revolution. Review of: The American Revolution, directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt. Florentine Films and WETA, 2025 -- We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution / Jill Lepore -- Money and the Making of the American Revolution / Andrew David Edwards -- The American Revolution and the Fate of the World / Richard Bell -- Freedom Round the Globe: A World History of the American Revolution / Sarah M. S. Pearsall -- The Unfinished Business of 1776: Why the American Revolution Never Ended / Thomas Richards Jr. -- The Long Revolution: Creating a United States After 1776 / Nathan Perl-Rosenthal.

>1 featherbear: Wow! Awesome list!

>2 keristars: I was introduced to Manisha Sinha this past semester. We read from The Slave’s Cause. She’s got a refreshing perspective.

>3 gilroy: One of the first political (novelized) biographies I ever read was To Spit Against the Wind back in the 70s. I think it was formative for me. I’m trying nowadays to read some of the Federalist/Anti-federalist materials.

I just finished Seceding from Secession, which though narrow in point, about the formation of the state of West Virginia, covered a lot of constitutional questions by all three branches of government.

>5 2wonderY: Oh, I need to read The Slave's Cause! That sounds so interesting.

One of my historian friends runs a walking tours company for Baltimore and has a few that touch on topics in that book. I've been so intrigued when she talks about the research she's done. (She's also the one who told me, very correctly, that I would enjoy The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic.)

and not to reply without a contribution to the list:

• Ned Blackhawk's The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

July 4 Addendum: American Philosophers
(in my personal library that I remembered to catalog; alphabetical order by philosopher; books about under the philosopher's name; collective intellectual histories under the author's name)

• Kwame Anthony Appiah: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Issues of Our Time)


• Allan Bloom: The closing of the American mind : how higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students


• Robert B. Brandom:
  
  
  
  • Making it Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment
  
  
  • A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology
  
  
  
  
• Stanley Cavell:




• Must We Mean What We Say?: A Book of Essays


• Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage (Harvard Film Studies)


• The Senses of Walden




• Arthur C. Danto:




• Analytical Philosophy of History


• Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective


• Connections to the world : the basic concepts of philosophy


• Embodied Meanings: Critical Essays & Aesthetic Meditations


• Encounters & Reflections: Art in the Historical Present


• The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World


• Nietzsche as philosopher


• The State-Of-The-Art


• What Philosophy Is: a guide to the elements




• Donald Davidson:




• Essays on Actions and Events


• Inquiries Into Truth and Interpretation




• Daniel C. Dennett:
  
  
  
  • Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology
  
  
  • Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
  
  
  • Consciousness explained
  
  
  • Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
  
  
  • Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
  
  
  
  
• John Dewey:




• Democracy and Education, 1916 : The Middle Works of John Dewey, Volume 9, 1899-1924: (Collected Works of John Dewey) / Jo Ann Boydston, ed


• John Dewey and American democracy / Robert B. Westbrook




• Susan Haack:




• Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays


• Philosophy of logics




• William James:




• Pragmatism, and four essays from The meaning of truth


• The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in human nature; Being the Gifford Lectures on natural religion delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902


• A Stroll With William James / Jacques Barzun




• Thomas Nagel: Mortal Questions


• Robert Nozick
  
  
  
  • Anarchy, State, and Utopia (forgot to catalog)
  
  
  • The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations
  
  
  • The Nature of Rationality
  
  
  • Philosophical Explanations
  
  
  
  
• Martha C. Nussbaum:




• Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education


• The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (just discovered I forgot to catalog it; 1st book I ever owned by her)


• Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values)


• Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law




• Willard Van Ormond Quine:


• Elementary logic


• Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary


• Word and Object (Studies in Communication)


• John Rawls:




• Justice as Fairness: A Restatement


• The Law of Peoples


• Political Liberalism


• A Theory of Justice




• Richard Rorty:




• Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity


• Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays, 1972-1980


• Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature




• John R. Searle:




• Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge Paperback Library)


• Speech acts: an essay in the philosophy of language

See also:

• The Metaphysical Club: a story of ideas in America / Louis Menand


• Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition / ed. Amy Gutmann

Americana Wish List

Possible adds to my collection; by author:

• L. Frank Baum: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Illustrated): Classic Edition with Original Illustrations (ebook)


• Sven Beckert: Empire of Cotton: A Global History


• H.G. Bissinger: Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream


• Robert Coles: Children of Crisis: Five Volume Set


• Percival Everett: James


• Paul Fischer: The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg―and the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema


• Beverly Gage: This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History (just downloaded & added her G-Man to the July 4 list, along w/Travels with Charley


• Greg Grandin: America, América: A New History of the New World


• David S. Reynolds: Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography (if I can't find my uncataloged pbk, I'll eventually get the ebook version) downloaded!


• Namwali Serpell: On Morrison downloaded!


• Manisha Sinha: The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 (tip of the hat to >6 keristars:)


• Brooke Wilensky-Stanford: A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America


• Lionel Trilling: The Liberal Imagination (New York Review Books Classics) (ebook available)


• Gore Vidal: 1876 (could almost swear I've read this but haven't cataloged it)


• Colson Whitehead: The Nickel Boys


• Garry Wills: Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (downloaded!


• Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States

Iván Chaar López, Erin McElroy. Public Books, 06/17/2026: Who Benefits from Distorting American Studies?

Owen Myers. Guardian, 06/24/2026: The best American LGBTQ+ books, chosen by authors. "From 20th-century classics to little-known treasures, Michael Cunningham, Hilton Als, Eileen Myles and others share their favorite books about LGBTQ+ life."

On my Americana wishlist >8 featherbear::

Dave Zirin, Andrew Holter. Boston Review, 06/23/2026: That’s How Change Happens: Dave Zirin on writing the life of Howard Zinn–and why his legacy points the way forward at the country’s semiquincentennial. Regarding: A People's History of the United States / Howard Zinn.

TLS reviews on America 250 from the June 26, 2026|No. 6408 issue:

David Armitage. Separate and equal: The Declaration of Independence at 250. Review of: Declaring Independence: Why 1776 matters / Edward J. Larson --When the Declaration Was News / Emily Sneff -- The Course of Human Events: The Declaration of Independence and the historical origins of the United States / Steven Sarson -- The Cambridge Companion to the Declaration of Independence / Mark A. Graber and Michael Zuckert, editors.

Tom F. Wright. An elegy for eloquence: Political oratory from Franklin to Trump. Review of: All We Say: A history of the United States in fifteen speeches / Ben Rhodes (Bodley Head).

Sarah Lonsdale. When the system worked: All the President’s Men at fifty. Touchstone: All the President's Men 1976 film.

T.H. Breen. Manifest destiny: American expansion from Virginia to California. Review of: The Scramble for America: How the United States conquered a continent / Clement Knox.

Guardian observations on America 250:

Vivian Ho. 06/24/2026: ‘The American experiment is clearly ongoing’: Netflix series examines how the US was founded. "In a new docuseries, names including Kamala Harris, Al Gore, Mike Pence and Hillary Clinton reflect on America’s origins."

Judith Levine. 06/10/2026: America’s 250th birthday celebration is replacing history with toxic myth.

>8 featherbear: Two from your list that catch my attention this season: Empire of Cotton and Lincoln at Gettysburg. I’ve liked Will’s take previously.

I think Howard Zinn is a taste for young readers; but perhaps that’s because I read him decades ago.

I’ve been fretting to read A Resistance History of the United States for nearly a year. And it’s finally here and in my Libby queue.

Also intend to open The Wages of Whiteness this month.

Probably need to add this to my Americana/July 4 wish-list:

James Traub. Atlantic, 06/28/2026: shared link: The ‘Two Ships’ Theory of American History. A number of titles noted, but the focus is on: Two Ships: Jamestown 1619, Plymouth 1620, and the Struggle for the Soul of America / David S. Reynolds.

Oldie but goodie?:

Ed Simon. Hedgehog Review, spring 2022: American Captivity: The captivity narrative as creation myth.

>16 featherbear: That is really interesting! I've read about halfway and plan to continue. Indian Captive was one of my favorite books as a kid, though I know as an adult it's got problems. (I always liked the part where Mary didn't want to go back!) My next 19th century children's book also has a captivity narrative, at least in part, so it's good timing for you to share it today. :)

Hannah Jocelyn. New Yorker, 07/01/2026: Eight Great American Novels. "New Yorker staffers each chose a Great American Novel."

1. Miss Lonelyhearts / Nathanael West


2. Mating / Norman Rush


3. The Last Thing He Wanted / Joan Didion


4. Winter in the Blood / James Welch


5. Fun Home / Alison Bechdel


6. Barkskins / Annie Proulx

Miscount?: Jocelyn is (apparently) counting her choice: American Wife / Curtis Sittenfeld & added a PS for A Thousand Acres / Jane Smiley.

Regarding >16 featherbear:

G. Thomas Couser. PRoB, 07/02/2026: The Declaration of Independence is a Captivity Narrative. “My argument, then, is that the Declaration similarly portrays the European settlers as victims of a heathen oppressor. It takes the colonial version and makes it an important element of our national cultural constitution.”

PRoB. Pittsburgh isn't Philadelphia, but semi-proximate. Anyway, Semiquincentennial thoughts from the Pitts:

Courtney Novosat. 07/02/2026: What, to the American People, is the Semiquincentennial? "“In effect, Freedom 250 is the response a petulant child gives an adult who simply asked them to share, but with national consequence and significant cost, literal and figurative, to the American people.”

Kangkang Kovacs. 07/02/2026: An American Struggle. “It was a familiar sentiment, this refusal to believe, against all evidence, that massive social turmoil was something that could happen here in America.”

Brook Wilensky-Lanford. 07/02/2026: What the Christian Nationalists Get Wrong about America. “Americans were worried about the implications of Congressional prayer—even religious Americans.”

Sean Murphy. 07/01/2026: The Beautiful Mosaic of America at 250. "“The actual America, the tumultuous, contradictory, aspirational mess that already exists has always been a work in progress, a wonderful, often bloody, occasionally awe-inspiring rough draft.”

see also >16 featherbear:

Addendum:

Fergus M. Bordewich. When America Celebrated its First Hundred Years. “Beyond the brass bands, bunting, and soaring oratory lay pressing questions about the direction of the country. What was the United States to be in the century ahead?” Excerpt from: Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America’s Future / Fergus M. Bordewich.

Ed Simon. LitHub, 07/01/2026: Will “American” Ever Be a Fully Distinct Language of Its Own?: Ed Simon on Noah Webster’s Dictionary of Independence.

>19 featherbear: I scoffed a bit at this title, but read anyway, and it's really very good! And interesting, a literary analysis of the Declaration of Independence.

It calls out some of the hypocrisy alongside "but they were right", and it's worth thinking about with the question from >16 featherbear: about who is allowed to have a captivity narrative, whose voices are recognized?

(The book I mentioned in >17 keristars: is about a girl who chooses to remain with her adopted Mohawk family, and I'm very curious now how the author will present that decision!)

I'm going to read some of the others from that number now. Nice breakfast reading! :)

More July 4 reading:

Alice Kelly. LARB, 07/02/2026: The Expert as Tourist: Beverly Gage takes a road trip through historic sites from 1776 to today, discovering optimism for our political future along the way. Review of: This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History / Beverly Gage.

Ed Simon. PRoB, 07/03/2026: Confessions of a Reluctant American(ist). “What this taught me, as I fully embraced the subjective, generative, creative act of thinking about national myth, was how America has never been a fact, but an idea.”

Kathy M. Newman. PRoB, 07/03/2026: To Dream the Impossible (American) Dream: A Bicentennial Reflection. “Young Americans today are pissed because the world that my parents were born into no longer exists.”

Ben Railton. PRoB, 07/03/2026: A Syllabus of Critical Patriotism. ”This perspective highlights and critiques the moments and ways in which we’ve fallen short of our ideals, in an effort to make us better, to push the nation closer to a more perfect union.”

Adom Getachew, Aziz Rana, David Waldstreicher, Nikhil Pal Singh. Boston Review, 07/01/2026: America at 250: A roundtable on the arc of U.S. history at the nation’s semiquincentennial.

Two July 4 observations from The Yale Review summer issue:

Kathryn Lofton. 06/08/2026: Reading the Declaration of Independence as Holy Text: How the American creed emerged—and evolved—over 250 years.

Samuel Moyn. 06/08/2026: The Birthday Party No One Wants: Why Americans aren't celebrating the semiquincentennial. for one thing, who can spell it?

Two more:

Jeffrey C. Isaac. LARB, 07/04/2026: The Declaration Alone Can’t Save Us: Danielle Allen’s rereleased reading of our founding document is surprisingly, and often maddeningly, ahistorical. Review of: Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality / Danielle Allen.

Jim Rasenberger. Atlantic, 07/04/2026: shared link: America’s Most Enduring Belief Is Also One of Its Most Dangerous. Excerpt from: A Perfect Coincidence: The Extraordinary Friendship and Astonishing Deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson / Jim Rasenberger.

A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America

One of the PRoB essays linked above is by the author of this book, Brook Wilensky-Lanford and might be worth adding to the list.

Striking picture from Twitter/X:

This image is from today. A Black woman sits on the DC metro as masked white nationalists prepare to march on our nation's capital.

This is America's 250th anniversary. REUTERS/Cheney Orr

>26 keristars: Might be paywalled:

Michael Luo. 06/14/2026: New Yorker, How Did American Christianity End Up Like This?: History helps explain the particular faith that now rules our religious marketplace. Review of: A God-Shaped Nation: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America / Brook Wilensky-Lanford -- Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity / Matthew Avery Sutton -- One State Under God: A History of Religion in Texas / Joseph L. Locke (University of Texas Press).

The Twitter link may allow access: According to Thomas Jefferson, the First Amendment established “a wall of separation between Church & State.” Reality turned out to be more complicated. With deregulation, Christianity moved into a thriving marketplace, in which churches were forced to innovate and compete for customers. For the past two centuries, religious leaders have sparred over the changing face of Christianity in America—from the revivalist movement in the early 19th century to the fundamentalists who scorned the acceptance of Darwin’s theory of evolution in the 1920s. The result was the rise of the modern religious right. “By the end of the twentieth century, this fundamentalism-inflected evangelicalism, with its muscular politics, was the unequivocal winner in America’s religious economy,” Michael Luo writes.

Luo looks at two new books that attempt to trace the evolution of American Christianity—as both a belief system and economy. “It seems possible that Christianity is once again on the upswing in America,” he writes. “As in the past, its form will be determined by the religious marketplace.” Read Luo’s analysis of the extraordinary rise of evangelicalism: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/7Rw1JS

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/22/the-church-that-won-america?utm_so...

>28 featherbear: Oh, thanks! I had looked at Wilensky-Lanford's webpage for the book, but mostly skimmed the quotes of reviews. That does look like an interesting article.

For the New Yorker, I can sometimes get past the paywall if i switch to reading view fast enough. I managed it here! :D

Don Watson, interviewer Sophie Roell. fivebooks.com, 07/04/2026: The best books on United States: recommended by Don Watson. "As the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, we asked historian Don Watson, author of the excellent The Shortest History of the United States, to suggest books to read to learn more about the country."

David E. Nye. MIT Press Reader, 07/02/2026: American Progress Was an Optical Illusion: The turn-of-the-century energy transition dazzled the nation — while concealing segregation, extraction, and ruin. Excerpt from: The Great Energy Transition: America from 1876-1929 / David E. Nye.

The NYT obituary of Mike Wallace makes the case for reading his Gotham project. Excerpts on Exploring Books Through Articles, Reviews, Announcements, & Lists 2026-02 July-Sept, posting #15

>31 featherbear: For all the love we have for our American constitution and founding fathers, their privileged attitudes were firmly imbedded in the document and each step taken to overcome those problems, the amendments and laws, hasn't really cleared them up. Sometimes I despair we'll ever reach a "more perfect union." What do you think?

>33 DebiCates: We'll both be 6 feet under before the more perfect union is realized, and a good thing too. The occasion should be the moment to think about where we are & where we go & don't want to go from here.

Worth a look:

Sarah Churchwell. Guardian, 07/04/2026: Burning flags, busty blondes and bison skulls: 50 photographs that capture America at 250. "From the gold rush to civil rights, the moon landing to 9/11, the US has always understood, mythologised and sold itself through the power of the still image."

I don't know how accessible this one is; lots of pop-ups:

Smithsonian Magazine. 07/04/2026 (?): The Revolutionary Spark. Culled from the magazine's archives one assumes.

Americana in song:

Kyle R. Garton. PRoB, 07/13/2026: The Subversive Power of American Song. “There is a religious sense of fallenness, of a gap between divine ideals and social reality that means that rectitude must be sought, not assumed.”

This is kind of tangential - it's an interview with a pair of cookbook authors, not really about the USA or its history. BUT they're Native and the cookbook is about 8 foods from the "new world" and ways to prepare them, especially with traditional methods. They show how to do nixtamalization for corn, too, in the book.

The interview makes me very interested in the book - heritage cooking is always interesting, and then the photo of the seven sisters stew is very appealing. :)

https://www.saveur.com/culture/seed-to-plate-cookbook/

Seed to Plate, Soil to Sky: Modern Plant-Based Recipes Using Native American Ingredients