McGuire, Sean.

Schneider, William S., 1946-, interviewer.

Kennedy, Caroline, 1957-

George Frederick Root, c. 1861 ; The flag goes by / Henry Holcomb Bennett, c. 1900 ; You're a grand old flag / George M. Cohan, 1906 ; West Virginia state board of education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943) ; Flags / Gwendolyn Brooks, 1944 ; The Mike Christian story / John McCain, 1971 ; Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989) ; U.S. blues / Grateful Dead, 1973 ; God bless the USA / Lee Greenwood, 1984 -- John Winthrop, 1630 ; Farewell address, September 19, 1796 / George Washington ; First inaugural address, March 4, 1801 / Thomas Jefferson ; Dedication of the Bunker Hill monument, June 17, 1825 / Daniel Webster ; The ship of state / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1849 ; The strenuous life, April 10, 1899 / Theodore Roosevelt ; Let America be America again / Langston Hughes, 1936 ; Second inaugural address, January 20, 1937 / Franklin Delano Roosevelt ; Inaugural address, January 20, 1961 / John F. Kennedy ; The times they are a-changin' / Bob Dylan, c. 1963 ; First words spoken by a man on the moon, July 20, 1969 ; Farewell address, January 11, 1989 / Ronald Reagan -- J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, 1782 ; Democracy in America / Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835 ; Democracy / Henry Adams, 1880 ; The picture of Dorian Gray / Oscar Wilde, 1891 ; Dangers of the dress suit in politics / George Washington Plunkitt, 1905 ; Take me out to the ball game / Albert Von Tilzer and Jack Norworth, 1908 ; On being an American / H.L. Mencken, 1922 ; As regards patriotism / Mark Twain, c. 1900 ; I like Americans / Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1924 ; The great Gatsby / F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925 ; American names / Stephen Vincent Benét, 1927 ; The 42nd parallel / John Dos Passos, 1930 ; You're the top / Cole Porter, 1934 ; The story of a novel / Thomas Wolfe, 1936 ; Hollywood / Truman Capote, 1950 ; The last gentleman / Walker Percy, 1966 ; How to tame a wild tongue / Gloria Anzaldúa, 1987 ; A country and a conundrum / Anna Quindlen, 2002 -- Benjamin Franklin ; Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) ; Civil disobedience / Henry David Thoreau, 1849 ; First inaugural address, March 4, 1861 / Abraham Lincoln ; The United States of America v. Susan B Anthony, 1873 ; To kill a mockingbird / Harper Lee, 1960 ; Letter from Birmingham city jail, April 16, 1963 / Martin Luther King, Jr. ; Special message to the Congress: the American promise, March 15, 1965 / Lyndon B. Johnson ; Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145 (1968) ; Opening statement to the House judiciary committee, proceedings on impeachment of Richard Nixon, July 25, 1974 / Barbara Jordan ; Remarks on taking the oath of office, August 9, 1974 / Gerald R. Ford ; Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000).

Thomas Jefferson, 1776 ; But, Mister Adams (from the Broadway musical 1776) / Sherman Edwards, 1964 ; America / Samuel Francis Smith, 1832 ; If I had a country, I should be a patriot, September 24, 1847 / Frederick Douglass ; Letter to President Lincoln, August 25, 1864 / Annie Davis ; Sympathy / Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1893 ; Freedom / E.B. White, July 1940 ; As freedom is a breakfastfood / E.E. Cummings, 1940 ; State of the Union address, January 6, 1941 / Franklin Delano Roosevelt ; Address at "I am an American" day, Central Park, New York, May 21, 1944 / Judge Learned Hand ; I've got the light of freedom / Pete Seeger ; Address to students, Moscow State University, May 31, 1988 / Ronald Reagan -- Andrew Hamilton ; Abrams v. U.S., 250 U.S. 616 (1919) ; Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927) ; Remarks to the Senate in support of a declaration of conscience, June 1, 1950 / Margaret Chase Smith ; New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) -- John Newton, 1779, 1829 (last stanza) ; Speech against missionaries' efforts to baptize members of the Seneca tribe, 1805 / Chief Red Jacket ; Speech to the greater Houston ministerial association, September 12, 1960 / John F. Kennedy ; Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962) ; Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 122 S. Ct. 2460 (2002) -- James Otis ; Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438 (1928) ; Planned parenthood of southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992) -- Abigail Adams ; Letter to Abigail Adams, April 14, 1776 / John Adams ; Declaration of sentiments and resolutions / Seneca Falls convention, 1848 ; Ain't I a woman?, May 1851 / Sojourner Truth ; Lift every voice and sing, 1900 / James Weldon Johnson ; Speech in Congress on women's rights and wartime service, January 10, 1918 / Jeannette Rankin ; Incident / Countee Cullen, 1925 ; Merry-go-round / Langston Hughes, 1942 ; Can a woman ever be president of the United States? / Eleanor Roosevelt, 1935 ; Brown v. Board of education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) ; The Chicago defender sends a man to Little Rock, Fall 1957 / Gwendolyn Brooks, 1960 ; Televised address to the nation, June 11, 1963 / John F. Kennedy ; Address at the march on Washington, August 28, 1963 / Martin Luther King, Jr. ; The feminine mystique, 1963 / Betty Friedan ; The special plight and the role of the black woman, May 7, 1971 / Fannie Lou Hamer ; Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973) ; Statement on Americans with disabilities act, May 9, 1989 / Edward M. Kennedy ; Address to the fourth UN world conference on women, Beijing, China, September 5, 1993 / Hillary Rodham Clinton ; Remarks on affirmative action, July 19, 1995 / William Jefferson Clinton ; Baker v. State, 170 Vt. 194 (1999) -- Joseph Brackett, 1848 ; Self-reliance, 1841 / Ralph Waldo Emerson ; Walden, 1854 / Henry David Thoreau ; Songs of the sacred mysteries / Sioux, 1869 ; The sorrow songs (from The the souls of black folk) / W.E.B. Du Bois, 1903 ; The road not taken / Robert Frost, 1916 ; Invisible man / Ralph Ellison, 1947 ; Address upon receiving the Nobel Prize, December 10, 1950 / William Faulkner ; Letter to the House committee on un-American activities, and reply (from Scoundrel Time), 1952 / Lillian Hellman ; Day of affirmation, Cape Town University, June 6, 1966 / Robert F. Kennedy ; The drum major instinct, February 4, 1968 / Martin Luther King, Jr. ; In search of our mother's gardens / Alice Walker, 1974.

Chief Logan ; Speech to the second Virginia convention, March 23, 1775 / Patrick Henry ; Common sense, February 14, 1776 / Thomas Paine ; Paul Revere's ride / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863 ; The Monroe doctrine, 1823 ; The battle hymn of the Republic / Julia Ward Howe, 1861 ; Shiloh, a requiem / Herman Melville, April 1862 ; Final emancipation proclamation, January 1, 1863 / Abraham Lincoln ; Gettysburg address, November 19, 1863 / Abraham Lincoln ; Second inaugural address, March 4, 1865 / Abraham Lincoln ; Memoirs / Ulysses S. Grant, 1885-1886 ; Surrender to the U.S. army, 1877 / Chief Joseph ; The Marines' song, 1891 ; Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind / Stephen Crane, 1899 ; The Caisson song / Edmund L. Gruber, 1907 ; War message to Congress, April 2, 1917 / Woodrow Wilson ; Over there / George M. Cohan, 1917 ; The unknown soldier / Billy Rose ; September 1, 1939 / W.H. Auden, 1941 ; War message to Congress, December 8, 1941 / Franklin Delano Roosevelt ; The gift outright / Robert Frost, 1942 ; Martial Cadenza / Wallace Stevens, 1954 ; The great crusade, June 6, 1944 / Dwight D. Eisenhower ; On the atomic bomb, 1945 / H. Robert Oppenheimer ; The fateful decision, 1948 / Albert Einstein ; Address to the nation on Korea, April 11, 1951 / Harry S. Truman ; Farewell address, January 17, 1961 / Dwight D. Eisenhower ; Blowin' in the wind / Bob Dylan, 1962 ; Commencement address at American University, June 10, 1963 / John F. Kennedy ; Vietnam veterans against the war / John Kerry, 1971 ; Born in the U.S.A. / Bruce Springsteen, 1984 ; On the rainy river (from The things they carried), 1990 / Tim O'Brien ; Remarks upon returning from the People's Republic of China, February 28, 1972 / Richard M. Nixon ; Remarks at Michigan State University, May 5, 1995 / William Jefferson Clinton ; Address on terrorism before a Joint meeting of Congress, September 20, 2001 / George W. Bush ; Address upon receiving the Nobel Prize, December 10, 2002 / Jimmy Carter -- Emma Lazarus, 1883 ; Explusion of the immigrants, c. 1884 / Huang Zunxian ; I hear America singing / Walt Whitman, 1891 ; I've been working on the railroad ; Letter to Octave Chanute, May 13, 1900 / Wilbur Wright ; Speech at the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, July 22, 1905 / Florence Kelley ; The jungle / Upton Sinclair, 1906 ; Ellis Island / Henry James, 1907 ; Barrio boy, 1971 / Ernesto Galarza ; My life and work, 1922 / Henry Ford ; They won't think, 1921 / Thomas Alva Edison ; Happy days are here again / Milton Ager and Jack Yellen, 1929 ; Brother, can you spare a dime? / E.Y. Harburg and Jay Gorney, 1932 ; First inaugural address, March 4, 1933 / Franklin Delano Roosevelt ; West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 (1937) ; Grapes of wrath / John Steinbeck, 1939 ; Death of a salesman, 1949 / Arthur Miller ; The kitchen debate, Moscow, 1959 / Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev ; Ellis Island interview, March 22, 1991 / Manny Steen ; King Leer, 1950 / Groucho Marx ; Coal miner's daughter / Loretta Lynn, 1970 ; Choosing a dream: Italians in Hell's Kitchen, 1971 / Mario Puzo ; Recapturing America's moral vision, University of Kansas, March 18, 1968 / Robert F. Kennedy ; Address to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, November 9, 1984 / Cesar Chavez ; My hometown / Bruce Springsteen, 1984 ; POPism, 1975 / Andy Warhol ; Speech to the Democratic convention, August 12, 1980 / Edward M. Kennedy ; Homeless children speak, 1986 / David Bright ; Speech at the Republican convention, August 18, 1988 / George Bush ; The joy luck club / Amy Tan, 1989 ; The education of an American, September 21, 2001 / Arnold Schwarzenegger ; Capitalizing on the "cognitive niche", 1999 / Bill Gates ; God bless America / Irving Berlin, 1938 ; The Thanksgivings / Iroquois, 1891 ; Twelfth song of the thunder / Navajo, 1887 ; Oh! Susanna / Stephen Foster, 1848 ; Old cotton fields at home / Huddie Ledbetter, 1936 ; Light in August / William Faulkner, 1932 ; Let us now praise famous men / James Agee, 1941 ; Florida / Elizabeth Bishop, 1946 ; The adventures of Huckleberry Finn / Mark Twain, 1884 ; Stopping by woods on a snowy evening / Robert Frost, 1923 ; Moby-Dick / Herman Melville, 1851 ; The sidewalks of New York / James W. Blake and Charles B. Lawlor, 1894 ; New York, New York / Fred Ebb and John Kander, 1977 ; Jazz / Toni Morrison, 1992 ; Chicago / Carl Sandburg, 1916 ; The significance of the frontier in American history, 1893 / Frederick Jackson Turner ; The ballad of Davy Crockett / George Bruns and Tom Blackburn, 1954 ; O pioneers! / Willa Cather, 1913 ; Response to the breakup of their reservation, 1903 / Northern Utes ; Home on the range / David Guion, 1930 ; The old Chisholm trail, c. 1880 ; The mud below / Annie Proulx, 1999 ; Oklahoma / Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, 1943 ; I left my heart in San Fransciso / George C. Cory, Jr. and Douglass Cross, 1954 ; Sunset / Jack Kerouac, 1960 ; Surfin' U.S.A. / Chuck Berry and Brian Wilson, 1963 ; Los Angeles notebook / Joan Didion, 1966 ; Big yellow taxi / Joni Mitchell, 1970 ; The wilderness letter / Wallace Stegner, 1960 ; America / Paul Simon, 1968 ; America, the beautiful / Katharine Lee Bates, 1893 -- Woody Guthrie, 1940.

selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy.