The America I Envision: Political Convention Speeches 1787-2000

by Seth Mnookin (Contributor), Martin Schneider (Contributor)

The America I Envision is an anthology that highlights some of the most notable speeches from America's long history of political conventions. From Benjamin Franklin's 1787 agreement to the Constitution "with all its faults," to Barry Goldwater's 1964 insistence that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice," to the speeches kicking off the 2000 presidential campaigns, this collection reflects over 200 years of change in the American political landscape and in the art of political oratory. The America I Envision includes speeches given by: Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Eugene Debs, Claude Bowers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hubert H. Humphrey, John F. Kennedy, Nelson Rockefeller, Barry Goldwater, Richard M. Nixon, Barbara Jordan, Edward Kennedy, Mario Cuomo, Jesse Jackson, George Bush, Mary Fisher, Patrick J. Buchanan, Ronald Reagan, Ralph Nader, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Joseph Lieberman, and Al Gore.

Paperback

First published February 1, 2000

About the author

Since 2005, Seth has been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he’s written about the American media presence in Iraq, Bloomberg News, and Stephen Colbert. In 2002 and 2003, he was a senior writer at Newsweek, where he wrote the media column “Raw Copy” and also covered politics and popular culture.

He graduated from Harvard College in 1994 with a degree in History and Science, and was a 2004 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. A native of Newton, Massachusetts, he and his wife currently live in Cambridge with their seven-year-old dog, their two-year-old son, and their infant daughter.