America [Hardcover]

Stephen Vincent BENET (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Holt ,Rinehart,Winston (1966)
• ASIN: B0019T20OA
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is how we grew -- This is what we are - This is America, May 27, 2002

By 

Tami Brandt (Missouri, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: America (Hardcover)

This is how we grew -- This is what we are -- These are the things we believe -- This is America.

Stephen Vincent Benét's last work is a short history of the land he loved, of the nation he interpreted so well.

It might be called a subjective history of the United States. Or it might be called a biography of the spirit of America.

In AMERICA, a poet's intuition has sensed the mystical ebb and flow of human thought and yearnings which were the moving factors behind the Jamestown experiment, behind Valley Forge, behind John Brown at Harper's Ferry, behind the great westward migration.

Superficial statistics form the major part of most histories: How many miles did Stonewall Jackson's foot cavalry march around the swamp at Chancellorsville? What was James G. Blaine's popular vote? What was the value in pounds sterling of the cargo dumped overboard at the Boston Tea Party? Not this one -- for what, after all, is the metric weight of a crushed dream? And what is the price of freedom per cubic foot?

You will find here the underlying spiritual and economic and political forces upon which are builded the statistics of formal history. You will find these precious elements which have nurtured democracy and made America great.

AMERICA, then, is the essence of United States history, caught and dustilled by a poet's insight and written by one of the greatest masters of modern literature.

AMERICA is an inspiration and a reassurance in these times that try men's souls.

It is a reassurance that democracy is a hardy tree which has survived drought and frost and hurrican in the past and that if we, its keepers, nurture it as our forefathers nurtured it with their blood, it will continue to grow and shelter us and our posterity.