No. of Recommendations: 7
Your post inspired me to go in the opposite direction in my reading. I'm going to start a book that's been on my TBR list for too long, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
A sobering choice.
Ever worth re-reading, too, is Frederick Douglass's “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
"On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration and asked, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass was a powerful orator, often traveling six months out of the year to give lectures on abolition. His speech, given at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was held at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. It was a scathing speech in which Douglass stated, “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine, You may rejoice, I must mourn.”"
I also try to read The Great Gatsby every year, and it is coming up toward the top of the rotation again. For me, its portrait of hollow striving and failed aspiration set against the backdrop of money worship of the 1920s (no echoes of today there!) not to mention Fitzgerald's gorgeous prose, place it among the very greatest American novels.
