A Is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States

ISBN: 0375704086

Author: Lepore, Jill

Condition: New

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 nations character and boundaries. From Noah Websters attempts to standardize American spelling, to Alexander Graham Bells use of Visible Speech to help teach the deaf to talk, to Sequoyahs development of a Cherokee syllabary as a means of preserving his peoples independence, these stories form a compelling portrait of a developing nations 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.