PROMISED LAND: Thirteen Books That Changed America
Jay Parini
Doubleday
Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780385522762
Is it possible to winnow down all the great books that have been written in --- and about --- America to a baker’s dozen? Jay Parini thinks so and offers PROMISED LANED as proof.
Parini --- a poet, novelist, biographer and professor at Middlebury College in Vermont --- selects his choices dating back to William Bradford’s HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION and ending with Betty Friedan’s THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE. He defines his selection process as including books “that helped to create the intellectual and emotional contours of this country. Each played a significant role in developing a complex value system that flourishes to this day.”
The other 11 titles feature a combination of novels and nonfiction, (relatively) light reading and much more serious fare: THE FEDERALIST PAPERS by Alexander Hamilton, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, THE JOURNALS OF LEWIS AND CLARK, WALDEN, UNCLE TOM’S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain’s THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK by W. E. B. Du Bois, THE PROMISED LAND by Mary Antin, Dale Carnegie’s HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, THE COMMON SENSE BOOK OF BABY AND CHILD CARE by Dr. Benjamin Spock, and Jack Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD.
Each analysis consists of a brief biographical look at the author and an in-depth examination of the book and its impact on American society. Parini also shows how each volume has held up; sensibilities during the time each was printed have greatly changed over the generations, but they still pack a punch.
Parini actually embraces the discomfort one might find in discussing certain themes, such as the treatment of African-Americans in Dubois’s SOULS OF THE BLACK FOLK or THE PROMISED LAND, a novel about the struggles of Jewish immigrants to adjust to life in a new homeland. The content of these books are connected, Parini insists. One common theme is the struggle to survive and thrive, be it as a colonial state: “One learns a lot about America by looking at these texts closely --- and the texts that swirl around them,” he writes, freely admitting that his choices are quite personal.
A book like this is designed to engender discussion. Why this book and not that? As widely-read as it has been, does Carnegie’s masterwork --- ostensibly the first “self-help” book --- merit consideration as one of the elite that “changed America”? Or Spock’s book on child care? Surely there are others better suited for inclusion. Fear not, for Parini offers another hundred titles of similar significance, any one of which the reader might want to substitute for the 13 finalists.
--- Reviewed by Ron Kaplan
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