A Patriot's Handbook: Songs, Poems, Stories, and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love

When John F. Kennedy called America "the land we love" more than 42 years ago, he was reminding us of the lofty ideals on which our country was founded. But what are those ideals, and how have Americans defined them Is America the land of George Washington and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who rallied the country's spirits for unity in wartime, or is it a land of dissent, a land in which Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Martin Luther King, Jr. remind us of our duty to protect our most fundamental freedoms? Are we defined by the speeches of Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan or by the humor of H.L. Mencken and Mark Twain?

Caroline Kennedy's answer in A Patriot's Handbook is that we are all of those things and more.

The poems, songs, speeches, letters, and historical documents that Caroline Kennedy has chosen for this remarkable collection remind us of the foundations on which America was built. But they also ask us to examine what it truly means to be a "patriot," even if our assumptions are challenged along the way, because it is only by doing so that America can "truly be our own."

Voices as diverse as the nation itself:

--Thomas Jefferson
--Cole Porter
--Chief Red Jacket
--Amy Tan
--Betty Friedan
--Albert Einstein
--George W. Bush
--Loretta Lynn
--John F. Kennedy
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
--Bob Dylan
--Cesar Chavez
--Toni Morrison
--Groucho Marx
--and many more