Words That Changed America

by Alex Barnett

From George Washington to Martin Luther King to George W. Bush--inspiring speeches from American history.

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Kit McAlear]

Really taking stock of my “currently reading” stack today!

I only had a few dozen pages left in this one so I hunkered down and got it done.

Overall I thought this was a good, encompassing collection of speeches. Only a few had me ferociously glued to the page (those mainly having to do with women and minority rights, surprise surprise). Most I skimmed through half heartedly and a few I read 2-3 sentences and skipped altogether.

The editor divided the speeches into four sections: “the consent of the governed”, “a more perfect union”, “freedom of speech”, and “America and the world”. It felt like a drag to finish mainly because of the placing of the last section and foreign policy not being my thing, but that’s a me issue I suppose.

So not a particularly “fun” read but I’m glad I own this book for reference and I did get some things out of it!

[Erik]

This collection of speeches was educational and enlightening for me. Each speech is prefaced with a short historical summary of the situation and the rest of the book is only the words of the historical speaker. I suppose any such collection must be influenced by the politics of the editor in the choice of which speeches to include. But it seemed to include speeches from various political views. The collection's author seems to truly have wanted to choose speeches that had some real effect on policy, belief, or action of the people or government of the United States. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in American history.

[Maryanne]

I love to see the things people find and are inspired to care about and how they care about it. I noticed that some of the people featured in this book died thinking they failed their convictions and their cause, when today they are hailed as our visionaries and heroes. I kept going back to a quote as I read:
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- G. B. Shaw