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The United Symbolism of America: Deciphering Hidden Meanings in America's Most Familiar Art, Architecture, and Logos

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America is a country founded upon principles. Principles focusing on the freedoms of every man, woman and child who proudly call themselves an American. The symbols that our founding fathers used to represent these principles are evident in almost every building, statue and even city street layouts. After reading this book, you will see how important these symbols are and how they have the ability to reach people on truly countless levels.

The author does an excellent job at discounting the Freemason ties that some conspiracy theorists like to ascribe to nearly anything that fits their agenda; as well as presenting much more believable, historically validated meanings behind these symbols.

This book is an easy read and is quite exciting!

I was lucky enough to get an early copy via a friend. If you are interested in the U.S., history, art, culture, or politics you will find so much written here that will illuminate, inform and inspire - not just citizens of the U.S. but anyone interested in what the United States represents and symbolizes to many around the world. And, especially pertinent to these times, Dr. Hieronimus and Ms Cortner reveal how the radical new vision, hope and wisdom of our country's founders informed our most potent seals, statues, monuments and icons. There's a lot to be proud of - and a lot that we need to reclaim, or should I say, that can help us revive the best values that not just citizens of the USA know and love, but citizens of the world can be inspired by as well.

I really enjoyed this book. Read it right through in one sitting, and am still returning to various sections. Especially enjoy the emphasis on the feminine archetype as seen in many symbols, where the land of opportunity means we will find balance between male and female in all things. Hieronimus says our symbols give hope that Americans can rise above the way things always have been. We have the choice to enjoy freedom in this country, but we also have the responsibility to protect it. Highly recommended and motivating.

This book was very informative on different symbols in Washington. Robert Hieronimus uses this book to push his personal political agenda, and that would be fine if it were a political book. He seems to hate the Bush administration and blame them for the misinterpretation of these symbols. I am not a fan of Bush, but if I wont to read about politics I would buy a political book, not a book about symbolism.

as an astrologer and dealing with symbolic lasnguage i found this book to be eye opening. for any one interested in meanings and purposes. i found the book written in a very straight forward and easy to read style. along with the hystory of the symbols, , it gives simple and practical advice of how to view the symbols.i recommend it highly, if you are interested in our country's history and its founders.

margie herskovitz,ca-ncxgr4,cap-ISAR,
CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL ASTROLOGER

This is a really interesting book. Unfortunately, I lost it on a plane. I will definitely order another copy.

If the huge popularity of the _Da Vinci Code_ did nothing else, it showed how characters in a novel could become obsessed with obscure signs and symbols that had some grandly important but secret meaning. It doesn't take characters in a novel to do so, however, as has been shown by many of Dan Brown's readers who went on to retrace the paths of the characters and see the signs for themselves. For millennia, people have been making symbols, and gaining strength, unity, and purpose thereby; and for just as long, I suppose, people have been taking symbols the wrong way, and sometimes deliberately misinterpreting them. People declaiming Satanists, the Freemasons, the Knights Templar, the Illuminati, Bohemian Grove, Rosicrucians, or the International Jewish Conspiracy seem at times quite eager to latch onto the hidden meanings that can be found in, say, our national Great Seal or even the map of Washington, D.C. Robert Hieronimus has spent years researching such hidden meanings, and refreshingly, he does not deny that the hidden meanings are there. In _The United Symbolism of America: Deciphering Hidden Meanings in America's Most Familiar Art, Architecture, and Logos_ (New Page Books), he looks at familiar symbols and shows how our Founding Fathers and others used them to good purpose, and how the cranks and kooks have been able to subvert them to absurd ends.

Repeatedly Hieronimus shows how interpreters he calls "fundamentalist-conspiratorialists" get their interpretations wrong, but they do so deliberately. They are "a sub-group of the religious right that believes everything that does not fit their strict definition of `Christian' is _a priori_ therefore `of Satan'". Take, for instance, the reverse of our satanic Great Seal. You have seen it plenty of times; it's on the dollar bill, and features that strange truncated pyramid capped with the eye in a triangle. Over and over in this book, Hieronimus demonstrates the proposition that what is strange symbolism to us was much better understood two hundred years ago. The strange pyramid and "all-seeing eye" were chosen for the seal not because they were occult or obscure, but because they were popular symbols, well understood at the time. Hieronimus shows examples of, for instance, the pyramid and the eye being used on money or church decorations long before they were put on the seal. The eye was the eye of God, of course, and the pyramid was a familiar symbol of endurance and unity. The seal was cobbled together, but it marked the first time that the eye and pyramid were placed together in this way, with a satisfying show of the spiritual and the earthly. The conspiratorialists who hate the Freemasons (and their hatred has gone back for centuries) insist that these are Masonic symbols that have been devilishly foisted upon our currency. Like everyone else at the time, the Freemasons knew the symbols of the eye and the pyramid, and used them in their own ways, but that is merely because they were common symbolic coinage. Of those involved in the committees who designed the seal, only Ben Franklin is known to have been a Freemason. There is no evidence that the artist who designed the seal, Francis Hopkinson who also is credited with the design of our flag), was a Freemason. The conspiratorialists also like to mistranslate the Latin phrases above and below the pyramid to make them seem satanic. There were Masons involved in getting the seal onto the back of the dollar bill in 1935, one being President Franklin Roosevelt, and although the conspiratorialists figure it's not just coincidence that disasters like women's rights and civil rights have boomed since that time, it seems unlikely that the Masons were managing any hocus-pocus to cause such changes.

Hieronimus regrets most of all that viewing these symbols with a fundamentalist religious or paranoid eye is not just erroneous; it tears at the fabric of society and it is a waste. 150,000 people wrote letters to the Proctor and Gamble company protesting their "satanic" man-in-the-moon logo twenty years ago, and the company had to change it. Hieronimus wonders what might have happened if all these letter writers had instead been indignant about pollution or unfair labor practices, real evils rather than imaginary ones. Viewing these symbols with an informed historical view can make the symbolism stronger, and, Hieronimus even hopes, help them inspire and bind our nation as they were supposed to. If so, his book will help in the effort.

Dr. Hieronimus' book, `The United Symbolism of America' opens our mind's eye to a way of seeing the symbolic messages encoded in our Nation's buildings, statues, paintings, logos, and money, in a way that informs and expands our consciousness.
Most Americans know very little about the art, architecture and symbols that depict our great nation. Dr. Hieronimus and Laura Courtner have taken great care to dispel many fallacies, superstitions and inaccuracies, often associated with these symbols.
Things we see, use and touch everyday can be reminders of those principles upon which our country was founded. I can't look at a dollar bill now, without thinking of the Great Seal and its symbolic images depicting a potential for a greater future of the United States and the world. I often exchange my $5 and $10 dollar bills for $1 dollar bills so I have more talismans in my possession.
As an artist, educator and Patriot; I highly recommend this wonderful researched and richly illustrated book that focuses on the greatness of America - past, present and future.

Symbolism - each and every day everyone is exposed to it and it's inescapable - it's one of the things the United States of America was founded on. "The United Symbolism of America: Deciphering Hidden Meanings in America's Most Familiar Art, Architecture, and Logos" is an examination of the rampant symbolism that is entrenched in all of America's culture, focusing mainly on the monuments of historical significance - and why they are monuments of historical significance. "The United Symbolism of America: Deciphering Hidden Meanings in America's Most Familiar Art, Architecture, and Logos" is highly recommended for community library history collections and for any who want a bit of unconventional insight on our nation's history and design.

I found this book intriguing and well documented, but I do not understand why one of the reviewers attacked Dr. Hieronymous simply because he graduated from a fully accredited, at-a-distance graduate school. There are dozens of at-a-distance graduate programs in the United States, and they only deserve the (potentially libelous) sobriquet "diploma mill" if they are unaccredited and demand no rigorous work from their students. Faculty members of Saybrook Graduate School, on the other hand, have been presidents of more divisions of the American Psychological Association than those from any other school (tied with the University of Florida). Hence, I recommend The United Symbolism of America to those readers interested in history, semiotics, or both.

~ Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center