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A is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States
What ties Americans to one another? What unifies a nation of citizens with different racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds? These were the dilemmas faced by Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as they sought ways to bind the newly United States together.
In A is for American, award-winning historian Jill Lepore portrays seven men who turned to language to help shape a new nation’s character and boundaries. From Noah Webster’s attempts to standardize American spelling, to Alexander Graham Bell’s use of “Visible Speech” to help teach the deaf to talk, to Sequoyah’s development of a Cherokee syllabary as a means of preserving his people’s independence, these stories form a compelling portrait of a developing nation’s struggles. Lepore brilliantly explores the personalities, work, and influence of these figures, seven men driven by radically different aims and temperaments. Through these superbly told stories, she chronicles the challenges faced by a young country trying to unify its diverse people.
In A is for American, award-winning historian Jill Lepore portrays seven men who turned to language to help shape a new nation’s character and boundaries. From Noah Webster’s attempts to standardize American spelling, to Alexander Graham Bell’s use of “Visible Speech” to help teach the deaf to talk, to Sequoyah’s development of a Cherokee syllabary as a means of preserving his people’s independence, these stories form a compelling portrait of a developing nation’s struggles. Lepore brilliantly explores the personalities, work, and influence of these figures, seven men driven by radically different aims and temperaments. Through these superbly told stories, she chronicles the challenges faced by a young country trying to unify its diverse people.
258 pages, Paperback
First published February 12, 2002
11 people are currently reading
344 people want to read
About the author
Jill Lepore
52 books1,519 followersJill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History, Harvard College Professor, and chair of Harvard's History and Literature Program. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker.
Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best non-fiction book on race, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; The Name of War (Knopf, 1998), winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, and the Berkshire Prize and a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Award.
A co-founder of the magazine Common-place, Lepore’s essays and reviews have also appeared in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, American Scholar, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Daily Beast, the Journal of American History and American Quarterly. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the Charles Warren Center, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. She has served as a consultant for the National Park Service and currently serves on the boards of the National Portrait Gallery and the Society of American Historians.
Jill lives in Cambridge,Massachusetts.
Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best non-fiction book on race, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; The Name of War (Knopf, 1998), winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, and the Berkshire Prize and a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Award.
A co-founder of the magazine Common-place, Lepore’s essays and reviews have also appeared in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, American Scholar, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Daily Beast, the Journal of American History and American Quarterly. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the Charles Warren Center, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. She has served as a consultant for the National Park Service and currently serves on the boards of the National Portrait Gallery and the Society of American Historians.
Jill lives in Cambridge,Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 23, 2025
The subject is genuinely fascinating and answers many questions I have been thinking about often. Lepore masterfully selects and illustrates several great lives from the inception of America.
However, this 250-page book took me 27 days to finish. This is the second Lepore that I have begun, and both times it has pushed me into a reading slump lasting several weeks. Maybe it’s me not her, but be warned!
However, this 250-page book took me 27 days to finish. This is the second Lepore that I have begun, and both times it has pushed me into a reading slump lasting several weeks. Maybe it’s me not her, but be warned!
January 5, 2018
There were many things I liked about this book. But for some reason it took me almost three years to complete it - and this book accompanied me literally to the other side of the world twice... But finally, I've completed it.
If you're looking for a book that talks about the technical components of a language, pick up an actual linguistics book. A is for American is definitively a history book which deals with language, nation and identity. Lepore skillfully connects different historical events and inventions (and seven individuals) that a reader not versed in American history (admittedly such as myself) would not otherwise be able to see connections between. I really appreciated many parts of the book, but especially enlightening to me were the chapters on Sequoyah and Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima.
Favorite and most thought-provoking quotations:
"...John J. Flournoy was at best a visionary and at worst a lunatic." He proposed the creation of a deaf-only (also white-only) state called "Gallaudet." (The hearing children of deaf parents would be sent away... yikes...)
"...Abd al-Rahman's story reveals the vulnerability of "a negro who can read and write." And, most of all, it points out just how invested most freed slaves were in assimilation, rather than colonization, in language as in all else. Frederick Douglas might, after all, have adopted a strategy like Sequoyah's - he might have insisted that true freedom for American blacks lay in a kind of linguistic secession and rejected English-language and Roman-alphabet literacy all together - but instead he insisted that American blacks can be both black and literate in English and, ultimately, American."
"In the 1880s [Alexander Graham] Bell briefly tried to breed deaf blue-eyed white cats, and for much of the rest of his life, he brought mutant sheep from all over Nova Scotia in an attempt to breed a multinippled flock." p. 185
I especially appreciate the fact that Lepore, when explaining the significance of these men’s accomplishments, does not shy away from discussing their misogynistic, ableist and xenophobic attitudes, nor does she shy away from talking about nativism, Samuel Morse's anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant publications, nor Bell's open support for imperialism, nor the islamophobia, anti-blackness and orientalism that was very much a part of the foundation of this country. These seven men were innovators, thinkers, and inventors, but they were not saints.
If you're looking for a book that talks about the technical components of a language, pick up an actual linguistics book. A is for American is definitively a history book which deals with language, nation and identity. Lepore skillfully connects different historical events and inventions (and seven individuals) that a reader not versed in American history (admittedly such as myself) would not otherwise be able to see connections between. I really appreciated many parts of the book, but especially enlightening to me were the chapters on Sequoyah and Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima.
Favorite and most thought-provoking quotations:
"...John J. Flournoy was at best a visionary and at worst a lunatic." He proposed the creation of a deaf-only (also white-only) state called "Gallaudet." (The hearing children of deaf parents would be sent away... yikes...)
"...Abd al-Rahman's story reveals the vulnerability of "a negro who can read and write." And, most of all, it points out just how invested most freed slaves were in assimilation, rather than colonization, in language as in all else. Frederick Douglas might, after all, have adopted a strategy like Sequoyah's - he might have insisted that true freedom for American blacks lay in a kind of linguistic secession and rejected English-language and Roman-alphabet literacy all together - but instead he insisted that American blacks can be both black and literate in English and, ultimately, American."
"In the 1880s [Alexander Graham] Bell briefly tried to breed deaf blue-eyed white cats, and for much of the rest of his life, he brought mutant sheep from all over Nova Scotia in an attempt to breed a multinippled flock." p. 185
I especially appreciate the fact that Lepore, when explaining the significance of these men’s accomplishments, does not shy away from discussing their misogynistic, ableist and xenophobic attitudes, nor does she shy away from talking about nativism, Samuel Morse's anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant publications, nor Bell's open support for imperialism, nor the islamophobia, anti-blackness and orientalism that was very much a part of the foundation of this country. These seven men were innovators, thinkers, and inventors, but they were not saints.
March 26, 2022
Review title: What makes an American?
From its birth in revolution to its growing pains of 19th century expansion to its reckoning with slavery, immigration, and, native--"Indian"--policy, many wrestled with this question. As a nation assembled from many nationalities and ethnic groups, it could not be superficial characteristics like skin color or "race" that were literally only surface deep and just as likely shared with their families in their home countries than with their American neighbors. It could not be religion as so many faiths had come to this New World to escape from the inquisitions of state religions, and those faiths flourished in the First Amendment freedoms of America's new Constitution. It could not be nativity because those natives were only rarely granted citizenship and tribes were declared by the Supreme Court as sovereign nations and hence not Americans. What made "us" Americans and united us as a "nation"?
Lepore has assembled this short shared biography of seven men who tried to answer this question in unique ways. Noah Webster of dictionary and school spelling book fame sought the answer in a unique American vocabulary and spelling: "Inhabitants of the thirteen 'united' states were too much like the English and not enough like one another: Americans in the 1780s shared very little by way of heritage, custom, and manners, and what little they did share, they shared with England. . . . Noah Webster and his supporters believed that Americans needed, first, a national government and second, a national language." (p. 17). Lepore compares the sketchy available data on language in the new 1790 nation with 1990 census data two centuries later and concludes "the percentage of non-native English speakers in the United States was actually greater in 1790 than 1990." (p. 28). Does the data point to the success of Webster's attempted Americanization of English--or the immutable character of English as the 20th century's most widely shared language? In the end, Webster's attempt to create a "distinctly American" (p. 56) spelling was mostly forgotten.
Lepore's second subject is William Thornton, who as a near contemporary with Webster sought to establish not a unique American language but a universal alphabet that would become the building block of a common global language that could be read, spoken, and understood by anyone. Her third, the Cherokee national thinker and leader Sequoyah, created an alphabet specifically for the Cherokee language so that it could be learned and written to reinforce a Cherokee nationality separate from the American English-speakers around them. Similarly, her biography of the enslaved African prince Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima,, who was found to be able to speak and write in his native Arabic even after decades of American slavery, shows the ability of language to distinguish, not homogenize.
The ingenuity of A is in Lepore's selection of these seven men who seem so disparate but yet share much in common as they struggle with the possibilities of language--spoken, written, signed, or electronic--to create either a unique American character or a universal language. Several of her subjects were motivated by Protestant missionary zeal to evangelize the world, attempting to do so by either translating scripture to every world language--or by creating that elusive universal language that everyone could quickly understand. Another common thread is those whose interest in languages was to help the deaf to be able to speak and read; Thomas Gallaudet's (Gallaudet University was renamed for its founder) manual sign language opened up literacy to thousands born deaf while some decried the isolation of these hand-literate students from the wider speaking world (p. 105), and Alexander Graham Bell followed his father's footsteps in teaching the deaf with "Visual Speech" before applying its principles to the telephone (three of her seven married deaf wives, indicating how central language was to their lives and personalities). In addition to Bell, Samuel Morse translated his interest in language into technological innovation, inventing the digital system of dots and dashes that made the telegraph the 19th century disrupter equal to the internet.
Lepore's biographical and narrative skills, which she would continue to develop and demonstrate in later studies such as her most recent These Truths: A History of the United States, are already in evidence here in just her second published book. Her research and footnoting is comprehensive and the selection of photographs of the subjects and their work are only limited by the small page size of this slim paperback edition. But it is her historian's mindset that raises the level of this eclectic study to serious consideration. Does language unite--or divide? In the 1846, as the United States headed for their cataclysmic split, Morse and other telegraph supporters trumpeted the certainty that "the telegraph would help glue the sprawling nation together" (p. 154). Jefferson Davis, who would drive the splitting wedge and lead the Confederate government, would say on the edge of civil war, that "above all the books which have united us in the bond of common language, I place the good old spelling book of Noah Webster." (p. 155). Writing in 2002 in the near-aftermath of 9/11 and its anti-Islamic backlash, Lepore reminds us that "Language, for many people around the globe, is still politics by other means." (p. 192). Webster, Morse, and Bell all advocated strict immigration restrictions, while some of these same men shared the Protestant "passion for evangelical Christianity. . . . [with its] millennialist campaigns to bring the 'universal truth' of the Gospel to the world's 'heathens'" (p. 191).
Are we united or divided? What makes an American? Lepore won't give you an easy answer but she will make you think hard about your easy assumptions. The answers we give as individuals and as a nation are as important as they have been since the Civil War as we oscillate between those poles. Thanks to Lepore for helping us think.
From its birth in revolution to its growing pains of 19th century expansion to its reckoning with slavery, immigration, and, native--"Indian"--policy, many wrestled with this question. As a nation assembled from many nationalities and ethnic groups, it could not be superficial characteristics like skin color or "race" that were literally only surface deep and just as likely shared with their families in their home countries than with their American neighbors. It could not be religion as so many faiths had come to this New World to escape from the inquisitions of state religions, and those faiths flourished in the First Amendment freedoms of America's new Constitution. It could not be nativity because those natives were only rarely granted citizenship and tribes were declared by the Supreme Court as sovereign nations and hence not Americans. What made "us" Americans and united us as a "nation"?
Lepore has assembled this short shared biography of seven men who tried to answer this question in unique ways. Noah Webster of dictionary and school spelling book fame sought the answer in a unique American vocabulary and spelling: "Inhabitants of the thirteen 'united' states were too much like the English and not enough like one another: Americans in the 1780s shared very little by way of heritage, custom, and manners, and what little they did share, they shared with England. . . . Noah Webster and his supporters believed that Americans needed, first, a national government and second, a national language." (p. 17). Lepore compares the sketchy available data on language in the new 1790 nation with 1990 census data two centuries later and concludes "the percentage of non-native English speakers in the United States was actually greater in 1790 than 1990." (p. 28). Does the data point to the success of Webster's attempted Americanization of English--or the immutable character of English as the 20th century's most widely shared language? In the end, Webster's attempt to create a "distinctly American" (p. 56) spelling was mostly forgotten.
Lepore's second subject is William Thornton, who as a near contemporary with Webster sought to establish not a unique American language but a universal alphabet that would become the building block of a common global language that could be read, spoken, and understood by anyone. Her third, the Cherokee national thinker and leader Sequoyah, created an alphabet specifically for the Cherokee language so that it could be learned and written to reinforce a Cherokee nationality separate from the American English-speakers around them. Similarly, her biography of the enslaved African prince Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima,, who was found to be able to speak and write in his native Arabic even after decades of American slavery, shows the ability of language to distinguish, not homogenize.
The ingenuity of A is in Lepore's selection of these seven men who seem so disparate but yet share much in common as they struggle with the possibilities of language--spoken, written, signed, or electronic--to create either a unique American character or a universal language. Several of her subjects were motivated by Protestant missionary zeal to evangelize the world, attempting to do so by either translating scripture to every world language--or by creating that elusive universal language that everyone could quickly understand. Another common thread is those whose interest in languages was to help the deaf to be able to speak and read; Thomas Gallaudet's (Gallaudet University was renamed for its founder) manual sign language opened up literacy to thousands born deaf while some decried the isolation of these hand-literate students from the wider speaking world (p. 105), and Alexander Graham Bell followed his father's footsteps in teaching the deaf with "Visual Speech" before applying its principles to the telephone (three of her seven married deaf wives, indicating how central language was to their lives and personalities). In addition to Bell, Samuel Morse translated his interest in language into technological innovation, inventing the digital system of dots and dashes that made the telegraph the 19th century disrupter equal to the internet.
Lepore's biographical and narrative skills, which she would continue to develop and demonstrate in later studies such as her most recent These Truths: A History of the United States, are already in evidence here in just her second published book. Her research and footnoting is comprehensive and the selection of photographs of the subjects and their work are only limited by the small page size of this slim paperback edition. But it is her historian's mindset that raises the level of this eclectic study to serious consideration. Does language unite--or divide? In the 1846, as the United States headed for their cataclysmic split, Morse and other telegraph supporters trumpeted the certainty that "the telegraph would help glue the sprawling nation together" (p. 154). Jefferson Davis, who would drive the splitting wedge and lead the Confederate government, would say on the edge of civil war, that "above all the books which have united us in the bond of common language, I place the good old spelling book of Noah Webster." (p. 155). Writing in 2002 in the near-aftermath of 9/11 and its anti-Islamic backlash, Lepore reminds us that "Language, for many people around the globe, is still politics by other means." (p. 192). Webster, Morse, and Bell all advocated strict immigration restrictions, while some of these same men shared the Protestant "passion for evangelical Christianity. . . . [with its] millennialist campaigns to bring the 'universal truth' of the Gospel to the world's 'heathens'" (p. 191).
Are we united or divided? What makes an American? Lepore won't give you an easy answer but she will make you think hard about your easy assumptions. The answers we give as individuals and as a nation are as important as they have been since the Civil War as we oscillate between those poles. Thanks to Lepore for helping us think.
July 11, 2021
Insightful description of how Americans sought to unify the young country using language to bind the diverse people. Lepore describes seven men who had major influence, from Noah Webster, who wanted to standardize spelling; to Sequoyah who developed a syllabary for Cherokee language, to Samuel Morse, whose telegraph brought communities closer; and more. It is an interesting study of how the US's vision of itself was partly shaped by the molding language.
August 22, 2017
Interesting piece of history, though not as cohesive as one might have hoped. Noah Webster's quest to use language and spelling as a point of differentiation from Britain was most interesting to me.
November 28, 2018
Really enjoyed the history discussed in this book, particularly the story of Noah Webster and his quest to create the “American” language.
April 21, 2019
not her best. Some interesting connections between history figures that I never knew before and a few other fun facts that I have honestly already forgotten...
May 17, 2021
Disjointed narrative. Exactly as interesting as you'd imagine a book about minor language variants to be.
November 17, 2017
If you couldn't guess from the title, this book is all about identity and how "characters in the newly United States" purposefully sought to create a distinct American identity. Think Webster's American English and the Cherokee nation's creation of syllabary.
October 10, 2023
A Is For American: Letters and Other Characters is the Newly United States. Jill Lepore. Knopf, 2002. 256 pages.
The concept of nationalism is rather recent in human history. The question of what makes a nation, what holds a group of people of together as a people, is still studied, discussed, and debated. All too often, the debate turns into violence and bloodshed.
In A Is For American, historian Jill Lepore looks at one element of culture, language, and its role in nationbuilding, specifically how a select group of individuals in the Early Republic period of the United States sought to use language as a tool for shaping the nation, or the world, to meet their vision. Noah Webster and Samuel Morse both wanted to create a uniquely American language to set the United States apart. Both were anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant and saw outside forces poised to destroy their country. Webster believed that an American language and spelling system would force immigrants to assimilate quicker. Morse may have been driven to develop his Morse Code as a secret weapon to ward off the international invasion led by the Pope that he feared. Sequoyah developed a new alphabet to protect and preserve his nation, too, but his nation was the Cherokee,
William Thornton dreamed bigger. He promoted the use of universal alphabet to bring the whole world together in harmony. Thomas Gallaudet and Alexander Graham Bell devoted their lives to improving the lives of the deaf, and they developed new languages to that end. In a more personal story on a smaller scale, Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, an aging enslaved Muslim man in Mississippi successfully used his Arabic writing ability to free himself.
Jill Lepore has become one of my favorite historians to read, and she's written so much, on so many different topics. This was a very interesting look at language and nationalism.
The concept of nationalism is rather recent in human history. The question of what makes a nation, what holds a group of people of together as a people, is still studied, discussed, and debated. All too often, the debate turns into violence and bloodshed.
In A Is For American, historian Jill Lepore looks at one element of culture, language, and its role in nationbuilding, specifically how a select group of individuals in the Early Republic period of the United States sought to use language as a tool for shaping the nation, or the world, to meet their vision. Noah Webster and Samuel Morse both wanted to create a uniquely American language to set the United States apart. Both were anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant and saw outside forces poised to destroy their country. Webster believed that an American language and spelling system would force immigrants to assimilate quicker. Morse may have been driven to develop his Morse Code as a secret weapon to ward off the international invasion led by the Pope that he feared. Sequoyah developed a new alphabet to protect and preserve his nation, too, but his nation was the Cherokee,
William Thornton dreamed bigger. He promoted the use of universal alphabet to bring the whole world together in harmony. Thomas Gallaudet and Alexander Graham Bell devoted their lives to improving the lives of the deaf, and they developed new languages to that end. In a more personal story on a smaller scale, Abd al-Rahman Ibrahima, an aging enslaved Muslim man in Mississippi successfully used his Arabic writing ability to free himself.
Jill Lepore has become one of my favorite historians to read, and she's written so much, on so many different topics. This was a very interesting look at language and nationalism.
July 3, 2012
Lepore does an excellent job of balancing the stories of the men she portrays alongside the broader historical and cultural context in which their innovations and communications were situated. She paints a lucid picture of how language is connected to ideology and nation, and how such a connection can result in both positive and negative attitudes toward humanity. In other words, language can work as a barrier as much as it can function as a means to foster ties.
July 3, 2008
I'm reading this for a bookclub, and as a wordy nerd, I thought I'd find it super fascinating. Unfortunately, this book is DREADFULLY DULL. I'm about 50 pages in, and the author has in those 50 pages repeated the same 10 pages of material 5 times over. I got the point the first time, thanks.
So. This is a book I shall not be finishing.
So. This is a book I shall not be finishing.
August 23, 2012
A good bit of history. The author looks at early American history through the perspective of 8 linguists. Some are focused on purifying American English, some are trying to find more efficient ways of communicating worldwide and some are outsiders trying to deal with America using their own language. Overall, it's a good story of how language factored into the creation of the American country.
September 21, 2013
Interesting essays about cultural trends in the early US viewed through the lens of alphabets writing systems and language
Gave me some insights into the feel of intellectual/political life in 19th century US as well as more detailed knowledge of some historical figures like Noah Webster and Samuel Morse
Very well written history/culture
Gave me some insights into the feel of intellectual/political life in 19th century US as well as more detailed knowledge of some historical figures like Noah Webster and Samuel Morse
Very well written history/culture
April 15, 2008
A somewhat interesting book on the history of writing and alphabets in the early United States. It does get a bit dry in parts though (even for me, and I'm into this sort of thing).
Want to read
April 1, 2009just started reading it-so far so good
February 9, 2010
Intersection between American history and the cultural importance of language as identity. Each chapter covered another fascinating story, LOVED this book.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews