EYEWITNESS TO AMERICA: 500 YEARS OF AMERICA IN THE WORDS OFTHOSE WHO SAW IT HAPPEN, edited by David Colbert, Pantheon, $30.
Gleaning passages from diaries, private letters, and memoirs, Colbert has assembled the words of 300 exceptional men and women who witnessed some of the most decisive and memorable moments in the history of the United States. Accounts include the words of Pilgrim leader William Bradford, excerpted from his History of Plymouth Plantation; early social reformer Dr. Benjamin Rush, taken from a letter to John Adams, a fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence; John Paul Jones, on his intrepid raid on the northwest coast of England, the only military action on the British mainland during the American Revolution; inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, as he defended his patent claim on the development of the telegraph, finally upheld by the Supreme Court in 1854; Gideon Welles, secretary of the navy, who was present at the death of President Abraham Lincoln; writer Jack London, as he walked the streets of his native San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake; black civil rights activist Rosa Parks, when she refused to surrender her seat on a bus to a white passenger; and astronaut Neil Armstrong, on landing on the moon in 1969. These personal and revealing writings not only create better understanding of how the country was shaped but provide insight into the minds of some of America’s most revered historical figures.
