Americanon

Now in paperback, the "illuminating, engaging and absorbing" (BookPage, starred review) history of thirteen books that defined a nation.

Surprising and delightfully engrossing, Americanon explores the true history of thirteen of the nation's most popular books. Overlooked for centuries, our simple dictionaries, spellers, almanacs, and how-to manuals are the unexamined touchstones for American cultures and customs. They sold tens of millions of copies and set out specific archetypes for the ideal American, from the self-made entrepreneur to the humble farmer.



Americanon looks at old favorites in an entirely new way, books like the Old Farmer's Almanac; Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book; Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography; How to Win Friends and Influence People; Webster's Dictionary; and Emily Post's Etiquette. Taken together, these ubiquitous texts help us understand how their authors, most of them part of a powerful minority, attempted to construct meaning for the majority. Their beliefs and quirks-as well as personal interests, prejudices, and often strange personalities-informed the values and habits of millions of Americans, woven into our cultural DNA over generations of reading and dog-earing. Yet their influence remains uninvestigated. Until now.

What better way to understand a people than to look at the books they consumed most, the ones they returned to repeatedly, with questions about everything from spelling to social mobility to sex? This "distinctive and engaging" (Library Journal) work is American history as you've never encountered it before.