1,000 Things to Love About America: Celebrating the Reasons We’re Proud to Call the U.S.A. Home – From Jazz and the Gettysburg Address to Baseball

by Brent Bowers, Barbara Bowers, Henry Gottlieb

From journalists Agnes Hooper Gottlieb and Henry Gottlieb, and Brent Bowers and Barbara Bowers, the acclaimed co-authors of 1,000 Years, 1,000 People , comes a new book that celebrates the reasons we’re proud to call America home—from jazz and the Gettysburg Address to baseball and the White Castle hamburger. Chock full of anecdotes and often surprising insights and historical information, 1,000 Things to Love About America is a smart, breezy, and unabashed love song to the good old U.S.A.

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published May 21, 2010

Reviews

[Rose Bedwell]

Everyone should read this book! I will be giving these as Christmas gifts! So much fun to mark the ones that you enjoy most. I particularly like the one about the farms in the US feeding a lot of people in other countries and that our military is utilized to stop aggression around the world. The writer tells us examples of these things. It is not a political book. Should make us think and be protective of what our nation does for the world!

[Anne Afshar]

I read this book on my kindle over a long period of time, here and there, in blots of time. It was very interesting and informative. I can't say I remember a great deal but the categories are interesting and the authors try to insert little puns here and there. I was especially interested in the last 20 or so entries.

[Joseph A. Montalbano]

Boring and Trite

There are a few amusing items here but too few with most unimaginative. The list of items became quickly boring.

[Naomi Hubbard]

Think

What is important to you? This selection gives you 1000 choices and may make you think of many more to make it more current.

[Bob Cantrell]

Reasons to be proud

When I got this book I was thinking it would one of those books of list, but it wasn't that. Oh it is a list, but it tells a little bit of why for each reason. Also I thought it was going to be very jingoistic. To a degree it is but I was proud of how it did at times point out greatest and weakest at the same time. We have a lot to be proud of and a lot to not be proud of maybe the authors will tackle the blemishes on our character at a future date. There are some truly great addressed in this book more than I could mention in this review. This book did one thing for me and that was to bring a smile to my face at times and a sadness to my heart when I thought of where we have been and still need to go. My only one fault I saw in my reading was Ira Hayes didn't receive the Medal of Honor. Want find out some of the great things about this country then give this one a read.

[Dj]

An interesting book that has any number of things to be proud of. Some more interesting than others. Like we should be proud we are Americans because of Alaska. Well maybe, but it might be more likely to be proud that McKinnely stood up for what he believed and bought the state against the advice and despite the jeers of others than being proud that a part of our geography is breathtaking. After all we didn't have much to do with making that way.

Of course it is a little odd to feel pride for Rock and Roll as well. Did we really invent Rock and Roll? It might be that the British could bring an argument against such a thing.

Even so the book is a interesting view of what the authors consider to be some defining characteristics of what it is to be American.

[Sarah - All The Book Blog Names Are Taken]

This was definitely an easy read - mostly because so many of the entries overlapped. I won't even bother to go into detail because I outlined more than a few in my updates as I was reading. I get what the book was going for, a fun easy read about what makes America so awesome. But so many of these things are not terribly interesting or special - seriously, there was an entry for beavers. This would have been about a million times better had the authors focused on 100 things and combined so many of the entries that so clearly went together. Then they could have also focused on having a bit more detail to offer the reader.

[Koren]

Some you may agree with and some you may not. Some may leave you scratching your head. There are people, places and things listed and sometimes just ideas and character traits. There is a lot of trivial information here. All entries are only a paragraph or two so it is a quick read.

[L]

There are many uplifting things in this book - things to love about America. It's also written with a nice sense of humor. However, this book contains far too many entries celebrating the hackneyed, trite, banal, and mediocre. Maybe that's who we are.

[Kylie Fager]

Did not completely agree with everything on the list but it was fun to read about things I have yet to see and add a few to my bucket list.

[G.T. Trickle]

Packed full of condensed useful information.

[Kristen]

Very light reading, good for a beach read.