Publication Date: September 24, 2013
Publisher: Audible Studios
Format: Audible Audio
Authors: Andrew Carroll, Marian Wright Edelman, Mirron Willis, Justine Eyre, Gabrielle de Cuir, Susan Hanfield, Stefan Rudnicki, Alex Hyde-White, Vikas Adam, Arthur Morey, John Rubinstein, Lisa Reneé Pitts, Paul Boehmer, John Winthrop, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, William Cobbett, John Downe, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Frithjof Meidell, Pierre-Jean De Smet, George Thompson, William Murphy, Walt Whitman, Elinore Rupert Stewart, Irma Czerner, Eleanor Roosevelt, Wallace Stegner, David E. Pesonen, Marion Carpenter, Scott Carpenter, Israel Putnam, J. Palmer, George Washington, Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, John Adams, Timothy Pickering, James Mitchell Varnum, Nathanael Greene, Patrick Ferguson, Colonel Lewis Nichola, Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Banks, Paul Revere, William Eustis, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Banneker, Benjamin Rush, Andrew Jackson, Lewis Cass, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Robert E. Lee, John Brown, Jefferson Davis, Franklin Pierce, Sullivan Ballou, Abraham Lincoln, Horace Greeley, Louisa Alexander, Archer Alexander, Lewis Douglass, Hannah Johnson, Henrietta Lee, William T. Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, William Still, Clara Barton, Jessie Gladden, Theodore Roosevelt, Adrian Edwards, Helen Keller, Eugene V. Debs, Frank Lloyd Wright, Lewis Mumford, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston S. Churchill, Francis Biddle, Harry Truman, Irv Kupcinet, John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, Bill Clinton, Eugene Holmes, Ronald Reagan, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, Mary Ewald, Saddam Hussein, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Tape, Mary Harris Jones, James H. Peabody, W.E.B. Du Bois, Margaret Sanger, Nicola Sacco, Minnie A. Hardin, Richard Wright, Katherine Anne Porter, William Ross, William Faulkner, David Kirk, Martin Luther King Jr., César Chávez, E.L. Barr, Jr., Margie Brauer, William Yaeger, Mark Twain, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Thompson, Sinclair Lewis, Fred Allen, Everett Rattray, Groucho Marx, Paul Hume, E.B. White, John Steinbeck, John Cheever, Josephine Herbst, Elvis Presley, Richard M. Nixon, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sophia Peabody, Edgar Allan Poe, Annie L. Richmond, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Susan Gilbert, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alice Ruth Moore, Albert Einstein, Mileva Marič, Edith Wharton, W. Morton Fullerton, Georgia O'Keefe, Anita Pollitzer, Agnes von Kurowsky, Zelda Sayre, Ogden Nash, Frances Leonard, Aline Bernstein, Thomas Wolfe, Gertrude Stein, Carl van Vechten, Ansel Adams, Cedric Wright, Jack Kerouac, Sebastian Sampas, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Charles A. Lindbergh, Ayn Rand, Joanne Rondeau, Jack London, Thomas Merton, Henry Miller, Ben Washam, Chuck Jones, Mary Moody Emerson, Charles Chauncy Emerson, William James, Henry James Sr., Maxwell Perkins, Sherwood Anderson, John Anderson, Charles Adams, Sylvia Plath, James Baldwin, David Rothenberg, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Hubbart, Eliza Hamilton, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John A. Copeland, Ambrose Bierce, Amelia Earhart, Eugene O'Neill, Archibald MacLeish, Edmund Wilson, William Rose Benét, Rachel Carson, Dorothy Freeman, Elizabeth Bishop, Joseph Summers, Joseph Huey, Grace Norton
4.18 of 12
The letters in this treasure-trove date from September 1630 - when John Winthrop, newly ensconced as governor of Massachusetts, wrote to his wife in England - to August 1996, when a young adopted woman named Michelle Song addressed a moving letter to her yet-undiscovered birth mother. In between are more than 200 other epistles - written by the celebrated and the obscure, the powerful and the powerless - that in aggregate paint a revealing portrait of the United States. The collection's range is enormous - from Groucho Marx's hilarious 1947 tirade to Warner Brothers, which was trying to block him from using 'A Night in Casablanca' as a movie title, to a June 1744 letter from "The Indians of the Six Nations" to William & Mary College, politely declining an offer to educate some of their young (and noting that some previous white-educated Indians "were bad Runners, ignorant of every means of living in the Woods, unable to bear either Cold or Hunger, knew neither how to build a Cabin, take a Deer, or kill an Enemy, spoke our language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for Hunters, Warriors, or Counsellors.")
Whenever possible, editor Andrew Carroll presents the letters in their original form, complete with capitalization and spelling quirks (including misspellings), which adds to their vividness. His brief introductions tell just enough about each letter without overshadowing their subjects. This splendidly presented piece of research offers a revealing, eminently readable window onto America's past.
RUNNING TIME ➱ 17hrs. and 13mins.
©1997 Kodansha America, Inc. (P)2013 Audible, inc.
