Over at U.S. Intellectual History, Tim Lacy reflects on the Library Congress exhibit: “Books That Shaped America.” The exhibit includes 88 books that have been important to Americans. It is based on an online survey in which participants are asked to choose three books “written in America by Americans, and had a profound impact on our nation.”
Check out the survey and get back to us. Which books did you choose?
I picked Common Sense, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and The Private Life of Benjamin Franklin (also known as Franklin’s Autobiography.
I think Chris makes a good point–the Book of Mormon should be listed. I can see why they would not have put the KJV on there, but somehow the Bible should make an appearance on this list. I have been doing some consulting work this summer for the American Bible Society and the more research I do the more I am convinced of the Bible central role in American life.
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“Why? Joseph Smith is clearly listed as 'Author and Proprietor' of the first edition of the Book of Mormon. And even we we take the book's claims of authorship at face value, its authors were somewhere in 'America' at the time of writing.”
Yes, and one might argue that if we take Biblical claims of divine inspiration and the omnipresence of the deity seriously, then its “Author” was in America “at the time of writing” as well. Criterion met!
Or, we could not treat the definition of “American” with the kind of narrow rigidity that would require the exclusion of a book as historically and culturally significant as the Bible, or an author as important in shaping the idea of American identity as, say, Crèvecœur. What *is* an American, anyway?
But never mind the Bible or the Book of Mormon — the list as configured would suggest that, with the possible exception of the “Big Book” of AA and the “curious hieroglyphick Bible” (a Bible picture-book for children), primarily religious texts haven't played a very significant role in shaping America. That's a misleading suggestion. To take but one example, Bruce Barton's version of Jesus is still a farce to be reckoned with. The man nobody knows indeed!
More on this back at the USIH blog…
“But a strict adherence to the idea of American authorship explains why they wouldn't include the Book of Mormon.”
Why? Joseph Smith is clearly listed as “'Author and Proprietor” of the first edition of the Book of Mormon. And even we we take the book's claims of authorship at face value, its authors were somewhere in “America” at the time of writing.
Christopher and L.D.,
The definition of “American” has a certain amount of flexibility to if. As I noted in my blog post, Paine had barely been in Philadelphia for eighteen months when he wrote Common Sense. Claiming him as an American at that point seems as much an act of retrospection as a description of contemporary reality.
And I fully agree to omitting the Bible makes the list much less useful.
Christopher, as I wrote in my follow-up comment on the USIH blog, if they're going to fudge “influential,” they could have fudged “American” by choosing a significant printing/edition of KJV in America. But a strict adherence to the idea of American authorship explains why they wouldn't include the Book of Mormon.
I'll pop in my exegesis of Paine's “Common Sense” here, just because.
😉
http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2010/04/thomas-paines-common-sense-as-heard-by.html
L.D. Burnett: I don't think the King James Bible was written in America by Americans, was it?
I do wonder, though, why the Book of Mormon wasn't considered.
As I just wrote in my comment on Tim's post, where the hell is the King James Bible?
Without having read your post, I selected the same three books as you: Common Sense, Franklin's Autobiography, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. But like you, I'm a bit biased toward the earlier period.
As Lacy noted, the list had some odd ahistorical choices, and certainly neglected the early period. For some of your readers who may not follow the Publick Occurrences blog, I wrote about some of the books for the early period here.
I went with:
1. Thomas Paine, “Common Sense”
2. Frederick Douglass, “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
3. Betty Friedan, “The Feminine Mystique”