All We Say by Ben Rhodes

ALL WE SAY by Ben Rhodes, a New York Times best-selling author, highlights “The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches.” He divides the book into three chronological parts: from the Revolution to Civil War; from Reconstruction to the 1940s and beginning of the Superpower era; and from Civil Rights to MAGA. The speakers and their topics are sometimes well-known (e.g., Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, Louis Brandeis, or FDR’s “Four Freedoms”), but Rhodes has included a variety of speakers who were well-known in their own time like Red Jacket’s “We Have Always Lived Here,” delivered in 1805, or Mary Lease speaking about how “Wall Street Owns This Country” in 1891. Speeches from several other female activists (Maria Stewart, Anna Dickinson, and Dolores Huerta) are presented.  Plus, Rhodes deftly contrasts the oratorial might of Confederate Alexander Stephens and Abraham Lincoln and later Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy. More modern-day speeches by Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump are also provided. In each chapter, Rhodes supplies some background and historical context as well as the experiences that shaped the speakers; gives the text of the speech itself; and then additional analysis. He is not a neutral observer by any means and chose these speeches to illustrate a 250-year argument about what it means to be American, contrasting “a story that views the nation as inherently right from the beginning” with one that “views the nation as engaged in a struggle to live up to that founding promise in the Declaration of Independence: a multiracial democracy founded upon the idea of human equality.” It is interesting, too, to reflect upon the ways that technological change has impacted both the audiences (size, attention span, common access) and delivery. Be forewarned that the text is rather dense although avid readers will appreciate the Selected Bibliography and Notes (roughly fifteen percent of the text). Much to ponder here.