San Antonio College Library

"Provides information about the history and celebration of American patriotic holidays and days of observance. Features include narrative overviews, primary source documents, chronology, and print and web sources for further study"--Provided by publisher.

In this ground-breaking, panoramic work of American cultural history, the author examines a central paradox of our national identity: How did "the land of the future" acquire a past? And to what extent has our collective memory of that past - as embodied in our traditions - been distorted, or even manufactured? Ranging from John Adams to Ronald Reagan, from the origins of Independence Day celebrations to the controversies surrounding the Vietnam War...

"The distinguished American historian traces the localized origins and steady growth of intercolonial unity and a distinct American nationalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." --

For over one hundred years, it has been deeply ingrained in American culture. Saluting the flag in public schools began as part of a national effort to Americanize immigrants, its final six words imbuing it with universal hope and breathtaking power. Now Richard Ellis unfurls the fascinating history of the Pledge of Allegiance and of the debates and controversies that have sometimes surrounded it. For anyone who has ever recited those thirty-one words,...

Explores the restless memory of the Vietnam War and an American public still grappling with its commemoration. In doing so the book considers the ways Americans have struggled to renegotiate the meanings of national identity, patriotism, community and the place of the soldier.

In this book, George McKenna ranges across the entire panorama of American history to track the development of American patriotism. That patriotism--shaped by Reformation Protestantism and imbued with the American Puritan belief in a providential "errand"--Has evolved over 350 years and influenced American political culture in both positive and negative ways, McKenna shows. The germ of the patriotism, an activist theology that stressed collective...

The author presents a look at a time "when patriotic observance was a matter of high seriousness and legislated pageantry," with a special section on an event in Mosinee, Wisconsin, staged by the American Legion, where the town was "invaded" by Communists.--Jacket. At a time when Americans dedicate their national holidays to barbecues, sporting events, and driving on crowded interstate highways to vacation homes and theme parks, it may be difficult...

US political scientists, a historian, and a philosopher reflect on the impact that domestic measures and foreign adventures undertaken by the Bush administration after the September 11th attacks are having on democratic values, patriotism, citizenship, civil liberties, institutions, and public policy. Annotation ♭2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).