A Patriot’s Handbook: Songs, Poems, Stories and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love, selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy. ELC library section 7 C: The Church in the World: Society/Human Rights/Justice. This thick book is a patriotic literary and photographic look at America. Its many chapters include The Flag, Portraits of Americans, Freedom, The Rule of Law, The Right to Be Let Alone, The Individual, War and Peace, Work, Opportunity and Invention, and Freedom of Religion. Think of something quintessentially American, from Lewis Hine’s photograph of a Young Child Mill Worker, to Longfellow’s poem, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”; from a reading from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird to the old cowboy song, “Chisholm Trail,” and you will realize why American culture is so endearing to us, and also so evocative of freedom and democracy – a beacon of light – to people living all over the world. Liberally sprinkled with photos both familiar and unusual, and speeches, important Supreme Court decisions, beloved poems and song lyrics, each item is introduced with a short note by Kennedy.
Share the photos and poems with your children! Photographs make a huge impact on visual learners (like me). Teens and adults will find the speeches and court decisions more challenging reading – The Gettysburg Address, FDR’s Declaration of War speech (“December 7th....a date which will live in infamy...”), and Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision that struck down segregation.
I found this handbook at last spring’s rummage sale and snapped it up for the library. ( )

(Alistair) And now a non-fiction booklogging. Part of what I think of as my "naturalization reading", actually.

The subtitle of A Patriot's Handbook is "Songs, Poems, Stories, and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love", which is perfectly true as far as it goes, but doesn't go quite far enough. A considerable effort appears to have been made to pack a wide variety of material into the book's contents, both from the point of view of variety - as the book's subtitle says, but including our founding documents, a number of significant court decisions, etc. - and from the point of view of balanced selection, politically speaking.

Recommended in general for anyone interested in this great nation and its history, and some very fine examples of American writing and rhetoric, although be advised that your reading list will probably grow considerably by the time you're done reading it; and as a convenient reference into the future.

Especially recommended, of course, for my fellow immigrants.

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/2008/12/a_patriots_handbook_carolin... ) ( )

Listen to this one. Archival recordings of Neil Armstrong and JFKennedy. ( )

LONGS,POEMS, STORIES, AND SPEECHES CELEBRATIONG THE LAND WE LOVE