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What ties Americans to one another? What unifies a nation of citizens with different racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds? These were the dilemmas faced by Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as they sought ways to bind the newly United States together.
In A is for American, award-winning historian Jill Lepore portrays seven men who turned to language to help shape a new nation’s character and boundaries. From Noah Webster’s attempts to standardize American spelling, to Alexander Graham Bell’s use of “Visible Speech” to help teach the deaf to talk, to Sequoyah’s development of a Cherokee syllabary as a means of preserving his people’s independence, these stories form a compelling portrait of a developing nation’s struggles. Lepore brilliantly explores the personalities, work, and influence of these figures, seven men driven by radically different aims and temperaments. Through these superbly told stories, she chronicles the challenges faced by a young country trying to unify its diverse people.
In A is for American, award-winning historian Jill Lepore portrays seven men who turned to language to help shape a new nation’s character and boundaries. From Noah Webster’s attempts to standardize American spelling, to Alexander Graham Bell’s use of “Visible Speech” to help teach the deaf to talk, to Sequoyah’s development of a Cherokee syllabary as a means of preserving his people’s independence, these stories form a compelling portrait of a developing nation’s struggles. Lepore brilliantly explores the personalities, work, and influence of these figures, seven men driven by radically different aims and temperaments. Through these superbly told stories, she chronicles the challenges faced by a young country trying to unify its diverse people.
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Review:
Nativist, xenophobe, and anti-immigration pamphleteer, Samuel Morse was known in his day for more than the telegraphic code that bears his name--one of the many things we learn from the prizewinning historian Jill Lepore in this vivid study of language and linguistic politics in the early American republic. Morse "never gave up his hatred of immigrants," Lepore writes, but all the same nursed hopes that his dot-and-dash alphabet would somehow contribute to world peace. Just so, Noah Webster, of dictionary fame and also anti-immigration, sought to lay down rules for a language that would "build Americans' fragile sense of national belonging," while Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet sought to provide a language for the deaf, and Sequoyah a syllabary for the Cherokee people that would enable them to participate as citizens in the larger society. Language is power, these reformers and inventors knew. Lepore's highly readable study of language and its political uses in 18th and 19th century America gives us a new context in which to consider language-reform movements today as well as a window into the American past. --Gregory McNamee
From the Back Cover:
“Engaging. . . . Deftly evokes a rich and colorful tradition, the American as inventor, unifier, optimist and idealist.” –Newsday
“Remarkable. . . . I read it at one sitting, mesmerized by the scholarship, the erudition and the elegant simplicity of this story of seven consummately noble American lives, each one of them, as Jill Lepore reveals, a pilgrimage in the grand search for a nation-creating linguistic ideal.” –Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman
“Wonderfully engrossing.” –Boston Globe
“Lepore is a terrific storyteller, alert to trenchant details but also able to convey the connections between events, the sweep of an epoch.” –The New York Times Book Review
“This is a book to ponder and re-leaf and return to.” –Times Literary Supplement
“A great read.” –Chicago Tribune
“Eloquent. . . Smart and suggestive. . . Readers will enjoy an intriguing journey filled with many small gems of understanding.” –The New Republic
“Insightful and engaging. . . . Lepore’s handling of [these men’s] distinctive careers gives them the place they deserve in the national consciousness.”–St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Lepore’s fresh work is suggestive of new ways of imagining what unites and divides us, what binds us to this earth.”–Raleigh News & Observer
“Entertaining. . . a charming book about the quirky origins of some influential early American inventions.”–The Washington Times
“Lepore has . . . produced a work of cultural history that is both diverting and informative.” –Book
“Remarkable. . . . I read it at one sitting, mesmerized by the scholarship, the erudition and the elegant simplicity of this story of seven consummately noble American lives, each one of them, as Jill Lepore reveals, a pilgrimage in the grand search for a nation-creating linguistic ideal.” –Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman
“Wonderfully engrossing.” –Boston Globe
“Lepore is a terrific storyteller, alert to trenchant details but also able to convey the connections between events, the sweep of an epoch.” –The New York Times Book Review
“This is a book to ponder and re-leaf and return to.” –Times Literary Supplement
“A great read.” –Chicago Tribune
“Eloquent. . . Smart and suggestive. . . Readers will enjoy an intriguing journey filled with many small gems of understanding.” –The New Republic
“Insightful and engaging. . . . Lepore’s handling of [these men’s] distinctive careers gives them the place they deserve in the national consciousness.”–St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Lepore’s fresh work is suggestive of new ways of imagining what unites and divides us, what binds us to this earth.”–Raleigh News & Observer
“Entertaining. . . a charming book about the quirky origins of some influential early American inventions.”–The Washington Times
“Lepore has . . . produced a work of cultural history that is both diverting and informative.” –Book
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- PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Publication date2003
- ISBN 10 0375704086
- ISBN 13 9780375704086
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages258
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A Is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States [Paperback] Lepore, Jill
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. What ties Americans to one another? What unifies a nation of citizens with different racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds? These were the dilemmas faced by Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as they sought ways to bind the newly United States together.In A is for American, award-winning historian Jill Lepore portrays seven men who turned to language to help shape a new nation's character and boundaries. From Noah Webster's attempts to standardize American spelling, to Alexander Graham Bell's use of "Visible Speech" to help teach the deaf to talk, to Sequoyah's development of a Cherokee syllabary as a means of preserving his people's independence, these stories form a compelling portrait of a developing nation's struggles. Lepore brilliantly explores the personalities, work, and influence of these figures, seven men driven by radically different aims and temperaments. Through these superbly told stories, she chronicles the challenges faced by a young country trying to unify its diverse people. The Bancroft Prize-winning author of "The Name of War" brings her historical narrative skill to a group portrait of seven men who had radically different aims and temperaments but shared a common belief in the importance of language in shaping national boundaries. 47 illustrations. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780375704086
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