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A Is for American: Letters and Other C..., Lepore, Jill

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eBay item number:316964752539
Last updated on Sep 27, 2025 17:25:41 MYTView all revisionsView all revisions

Item specifics

Condition
Good: A book that has been read but is in good condition. Very minimal damage to the cover including ...
ISBN
037540449X
EAN
9780375404498
Publication Name
N/A
Type
Hardback
Release Title
A Is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly U...
Artist
Lepore, Jill
Brand
N/A
Colour
N/A
Category

About this product

Product Identifiers

Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
ISBN-10
037540449X
ISBN-13
9780375404498
eBay Product ID (ePID)
22038267025

Product Key Features

Book Title
A Is for American : Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States
Number of Pages
256 Pages
Language
English
Topic
United States / Revolutionary Period (1775-1800), Linguistics / Historical & Comparative, United States / General, Linguistics / General
Publication Year
2002
Illustrator
Yes
Genre
Language Arts & Disciplines, History
Author
Jill Lepore
Format
Hardcover

Dimensions

Item Height
1 in
Item Weight
19.9 Oz
Item Length
9.5 in
Item Width
6.5 in

Additional Product Features

Intended Audience
Trade
LCCN
2001-038057
Dewey Edition
21
Reviews
"On every single page of this remarkable book I discovered nuggets of fascination and delight. I read it at one sitting, mesmerised by the scholarship, the erudition and the elegant simplicity of this story of seven consummately noble American lives, each one of them, as Jill Lepore reveals, a pilgrimage in the grand search for a nation-creating linguistic ideal." -- Simon Winchester, author ofThe Professor and the Madman, "On every single page of this remarkable book I discovered nuggets of fascination and delight. I read it at one sitting, mesmerised by the scholarship, the erudition and the elegant simplicity of this story of seven consummately noble American lives, each one of them, as Jill Lepore reveals, a pilgrimage in the grand search for a nation-creating linguistic ideal." -- Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman
Dewey Decimal
306.44/973/09033
Synopsis
What ties Americans to one another? Not race, religion, or ethnicity. At the nation's founding, some commentators wondered whether adopting a common tongue might help bind the newly United States together. "A national language is a national tie," Noah Webster argued in 1786, "and what country wants it more than America?" In the century following the drafting of the Constitution, Americans from Noah Webster to Samuel F. B. Morse tried to use letters and other characters-alphabets, syllabaries, signs, and codes-to strengthen the new American nation, to string it together with chains of letters and cables of wire. Webster published a spelling book, hoping to teach Americans to speak and spell alike; Morse devised a dot-and-dash alphabet to link the country by telegraph. Meanwhile, other Americans used these same tools to connect the new republic to the larger world. Caribbean-born William Thornton devised a "universal alphabet," dreaming of making "the world seem more nearly allied." Hartford minister Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet preached that the sign language of the deaf was a divinely inspired "natural language" that could help usher in the new millennium. And elocution professor Alexander Graham Bell was inspired by his father's universal alphabet, known as Visible Speech, to invent the telephone. Still other Americans used letters and other characters to distance themselves from the United States. Cherokee silversmith Sequoyah invented an eighty-five-character syllabary for the Cherokee language to promote his people's independence; Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, an aging slave in Natchez, Mississippi, demonstrated his Arabic literacy to gain both his freedom and his passage back to Africa. In A Is for American, Jill Lepore tells the tales of these seven unusual characters-Webster, Thornton, Sequoyah, Gallaudet, Abd al-Rahman, Morse, and Bell-and their efforts to use language to define national character and shape national boundaries. Taken together, these superbly told stories, ranging from the Revolution to Reconstruction, reveal the daunting challenges faced by a new nation in unifying its diverse people.
LC Classification Number
PE2809.L46 2002

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In 2002, World of Books Group was founded on an ethos to do good, protect the planet and support charities by enabling more goods to be reused. Since then, we've grown into to a global company ...
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