Twenty-Five Books That Shaped America: How White Whales, Green Lights, and Restless Spirits Forged Our National Identity - Softcover

Foster, Thomas C

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061834408 ISBN 13: 9780061834400

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2011

Synopsis

Thomas C. Foster, acclaimed author of the phenomenal bestseller How to Read Literature Like a Professor, returns with a hugely entertaining appreciation of twenty-five works of literature that have greatly influenced the American identity. In a delightfully informative, often wry manner, Twenty-Five Books that Shaped America looks closely at important literary classics that are true national treasures. From The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, and Huckleberry Finn through Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Twenty-Five Books that Shaped America examines masterpieces of the written word that have greatly influence what we are as a people and a nation.

About this title

Review:

"Funny, challenging, clear, and always insightful, this intriguing book will make you think again about what it means to be an American."--Janice A. Radway, author of A Feeling for Books

"Many readers will wish they had a high-school English teacher as cheery and engaged as Foster."--Kirkus Reviews

"Foster is a witty, quirkily provocative, and perceptive literary critic."--Publishers Weekly

From the Back Cover:

From the author of the New York Times bestselling How to Read Literature Like a Professor comes a highly entertaining and informative new book on the twenty-five works of literature that have most shaped the American character. Foster applies his much-loved combination of wit, know-how, and analysis to explain how each work has shaped our very existence as readers, students, teachers, and Americans.

Foster illuminates how books such as The Last of the Mohicans, Moby-Dick, My Ántonia, The Great Gatsby, The Maltese Falcon, Their Eyes Were Watching God, On the Road, The Crying of Lot 49, and others captured an American moment, how they influenced our perception of nationhood and citizenship, and what about them endures in the American character. Twenty-five Books That Shaped America is a fun and enriching guide to America through its literature.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0061834408
• ISBN 13: 9780061834400
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352