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Jon Meacham

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Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation Kindle Edition

by Jon Meacham (Author), Tim McGraw (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A celebration of American history through the music that helped to shape a nation, by Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and music superstar Tim McGraw

“Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw form an irresistible duo—connecting us to music as an unsung force in our nation's history.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin

Through all the years of strife and triumph, America has been shaped not just by our elected leaders and our formal politics but also by our music—by the lyrics, performers, and instrumentals that have helped to carry us through the dark days and to celebrate the bright ones.

From “The Star-Spangled Banner” to “Born in the U.S.A.,” Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw take readers on a moving and insightful journey through eras in American history and the songs and performers that inspired us. Meacham chronicles our history, exploring the stories behind the songs, and Tim McGraw reflects on them as an artist and performer. Their perspectives combine to create a unique view of the role music has played in uniting and shaping a nation.

Beginning with the battle hymns of the revolution, and taking us through songs from the defining events of the Civil War, the fight for women’s suffrage, the two world wars, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and into the twenty-first century, Meacham and McGraw explore the songs that defined generations, and the cultural and political climates that produced them. Readers will discover the power of music in the lives of figures such as Harriet Tubman, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and will learn more about some of our most beloved musicians and performers, including Marian Anderson, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, and more.

Songs of America explores both famous songs and lesser-known ones, expanding our understanding of the scope of American music and lending deeper meaning to the historical context of such songs as “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America,” “Over There,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” As Quincy Jones says, Meacham and McGraw have “convened a concert in Songs of America,” one that reminds us of who we are, where we’ve been, and what we, at our best, can be.

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From the Publisher

Ken Burns says, “This is an unusually well-written and moving story.”

A celebration of music that helped shape our nation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“From hymns that swelled the hearts of revolutionaries to the spirituals that stirred citizens to spill blood for a more perfect Union and the blues- and country-infused beats that aroused change in the 1960s, Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw form an irresistible duo—connecting us to music as an unsung force in our nation's history. Songs of America is not just a cultural journey—it strikes our deepest chords as Americans: patriotism, protest, possibility, creativity, and, at the root of it all, freedom of expression enshrined in our founding document.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin

“The civil rights movement couldn’t have happened without its music, and Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw have written a wonderful and moving account of how the sounds of America helped lead us toward what Dr. King called ‘the Beloved Community.’ This book brings it all back for me—the struggles and the triumphs, the tough days and the transcendent ones.”—John Lewis

“From the songs of the enslaved to the sounds of the civil rights movement, from ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ to Springsteen's ‘The Rising’ after 9/11, Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw have convened a concert in Songs of America. It is a glorious celebration of our diversity—and of the strength that comes from the myriad voices of all races that make us who we are."
—Quincy Jone

“What a gem of a book! To read, to see, to hear the history of America, right and wrong, in song. This is an unusually well-written and moving story; it’s about us and U.S. all at the same time—as intimate as it is majestic in scope and reach.”—Ken Burns

About the Author

Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, and The Soul of America, Meacham holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Chair in the American Presidency and is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University. He is a contributing writer to The New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor to Time, and a fellow of the Society of American Historians.

Tim McGraw is a Grammy Award–winning entertainer, author, and actor who has sold more than fifty million records worldwide and dominated the charts with forty-three number one singles. He is the most played country artist since his debut in 1992, has two New York Times bestselling books to his credit, and has acted in such movies as Friday Night Lights and The Blind Side. McGraw is considered one of the most successful touring acts in the history of country music. His last solo project spawned one of the biggest hit singles of all time, “Humble and Kind,” whose message continues to impact fans around the world.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

The Sensations of Freedom

“By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.”

—John Dickinson, “The Liberty Song,” 1768

“Objects of the most stupendous magnitude, measures in which the lives and liberties of millions, born and unborn, are most essentially interested, are now before us. We are in the very midst of a Revolution, the most complete, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the history of nations.”

—John Adams, Sunday, June 9, 1776

“Remember the Ladies.”

—Abigail Adams, to her husband as the Founders debated independence

Night was about to fall. As daylight faded on Friday, June 10, 1768, officials of the British Crown stepped across the wharves of Boston Harbor to seize the Liberty, a sloop owned by the merchant John Hancock of Massachusetts. The charge: that Hancock’s men had smuggled casks of Madeira wine from the Liberty’s hold to avoid paying stiff duties recently imposed under the hated Townshend Acts. Anticipating trouble, the imperial authorities had deployed the heavily armed warship HMS Romney—which contemporaries described as a “fine new 50-Gun ship”—for the task. “This conduct provoked the People, who had collected on the Shore,” The Boston Gazette reported, and the gathering of colonials surged toward the British collector of customs, Joseph Harrison, as he came back off the Liberty. On the street adjoining the harbor, Harrison wrote, “we were pursued by the Mob which by this time was increased to a great multitude. The onset was begun by throwing dirt at me, which was presently succeeded by volleys of stones, brickbats, sticks, or anything that came to hand. . . . About this time I received a violent blow on the breast which had like to have brought me to the ground, and I verily believe that if I had fallen, I should never have got up again, the People to all appearance being determined on blood and murder.”

The royal governor of Massachusetts was flummoxed, denouncing what he called this “Great Riot” in dispatches to London. The colonials, naturally, had a different view. To them, the specter of the Romney taking control of Hancock’s Liberty was an outrage, a veritable act of war. “We will support our liberties,” a patriot leader cried in the wake of the seizure, “depending upon the strength of our own arms and God.”

Hearing the news, John Dickinson of Pennsylvania was moved to pick up his pen to strike a blow in favor of the colonial cause. Born in 1732, raised in Dover, Delaware, and trained as a lawyer in Philadelphia and at the Middle Temple in London, Dickinson had recently published an influential series of essays entitled Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies. The Townshend Acts had been the occasion for Dickinson’s Letters; in Boston, Joseph Harrison had found Dickinson’s writings “inflaming and seditious . . . tending to poison and incense the minds of the people and alienate them from all regard and obedience to the Legislature of the Mother Country.”

A sustained attempt to argue for the justice of the colonial view that representation was a civil right in the English tradition, the Letters would bring Dickinson acclaim, including an honorary degree from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). “From infancy,” Dickinson had written, “I was taught to love liberty and humanity.”

To him and to many of his readers, taxation without representation—including duties on Madeira—was intolerable. “A free people,” Dickinson had written, “can never be too quick in observing, nor too firm in opposing, the beginnings of alterations . . . respecting institutions formed for their security.” It was essential, he wrote, to guard against the “servitude” that could be “slipped upon us” by new laws and their vigorous enforcement.

His Letters had been prose. Now, in the wake of the clash in Boston, he would try poetry, composing a series of verses in honor of the resistance in Massachusetts. “I enclose you a song for American freedom,” Dickinson wrote James Otis of Boston. “I have long since renounced poetry, but as indifferent songs are very powerful on certain occasions, I venture to invoke the deserted muses.” He told Otis that Arthur Lee of Virginia, a Dickinson friend, had contributed eight lines of “The Liberty Song.” Published in Philadelphia and in The Boston Gazette of July 18, 1768, the song was set to William Boyce’s “Heart of Oak,” a patriotic British number popular with the Royal Navy.

Come join hand in hand, brave Americans all,

And rouse your bold hearts at fair Liberty’s call;

No tyrannous acts shall suppress your just claim,

Or stain with dishonor America’s name.

In freedom we’re born, and in freedom we’ll live;

Our purses are ready,

Steady, Friends, steady,

Not as slaves, but as freemen our money we’ll give.

Our worthy forefathers—let’s give them a cheer—

To climates unknown did courageously steer;

Thro’ oceans, to deserts, for freedom they came,

And, dying, bequeath’d us their freedom and fame.

Their generous bosoms all dangers despis’d,

So highly, so wisely, their birthrights they priz’d;

We’ll keep what they gave, we will piously keep,

Nor frustrate their toils on the land and the deep.

The Tree, their own hands had to Liberty rear’d,

They lived to behold growing strong and rever’d;

With transport they cry’d, “Now our wishes we gain,

For our children shall gather the fruits of our pain.”

Swarms of placemen and pensioners soon will appear,

Like locusts deforming the charms of the year;

Suns vainly will rise, showers vainly descend,

If we are to drudge for what others shall spend.

Then join hand in hand brave Americans all,

By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall;

In so righteous a cause let us hope to succeed,

For Heaven approves of each generous deed.

All ages shall speak with amaze and applause,

Of the courage we’ll show in support of our laws;

To die we can bear—but to serve we disdain,

For shame is to freedom more dreadful than pain.

This bumper I crown for our sovereign’s health,

And this for Britannia’s glory and wealth;

That wealth and that glory immortal may be,

If she is but just—and if we are but free.

Dickinson had great hopes for his work. Citing the example of Jean-François-Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz, a wily seventeenth-century French cardinal and adventurer, he wrote: “Cardinal de Retz always enforced his political operations by songs. I wish our attempt may be useful.”

Dickinson’s language was designed to appeal to the emotions of his broad audience. “By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall”; “In so righteous a cause let us hope to succeed”; “To die we can bear, but to serve we disdain”—the song’s message was unmistakable. Unity was all; a common cause would carry the day; the stakes could not be higher.

Here, in the middle of the summer of 1768, eight years before the Declaration of Independence, an American patriot was making a popular case for American identity and for American action not in the staid language of the political press but in the more universal and stirring genre of music. “The Liberty Song” quickly spread. “The music began at high noon,” The Boston Evening-Post reported of a Sunday, August 14, 1768, gathering, “performed on various instruments, joined with voices; and concluding with the universally admired American Song of Liberty, the grandeur of its sentiment, and the easy flow of its numbers, together with an exquisite harmony of sound, afforded sublime entertainments to a numerous audience, fraught with a noble ardor in the cause of freedom.” To John Adams, Dickinson had done something wondrous. “This,” Adams remarked of the song, “is cultivating the sensations of freedom.”

Dickinson’s composition, Kenneth Silverman, a scholar of American Revolutionary culture, observed, “became not so much useful as indispensable. . . . It enabled people to experience directly the idea of strength in unity, by enacting it in boisterous choral singing. . . . By wedding the current political arguments to music, Dickinson knew, he drew on emotional resources that the words alone could not muster.”

Yet America did not declare its independence in the wake of Dickinson’s song, or for eight years afterward. The ensuing period was marked by further taxes and protests, more debate over the nature of representative government, and rising concerns over the role of imperial authority in colonial affairs. How did a group of disparate British North Americans, subjects of the British Empire all their lives, decide to risk everything?

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07PN132SH
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House (June 11, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 11, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 119546 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 289 pages

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Jon Meacham

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Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, and Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, he is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review, and a fellow of the Society of American Historians. Meacham lives in Nashville with his wife and children.

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Linda

Songs Enable Us to Empathize Across Deep Divides

Reviewed in the United States on June 17, 2019

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In Songs of America, historian Jon Meacham and country singer Tim McGraw look at the intersection between songs and inflexion points in US history. Their landscape extends from the pre-Revolutionary War period to the post-9/11 period. The authors state that songs reflect the emotions and aspirations of Americans of opposing views during times of national crisis and times of national celebration. As such, examining the relationships between songs and history can open new insights into conflicts and debates in the American past that we can't obtain from reading the prose of history books. These insights can help us better understand the tensions and divisions of our present moment and give us hope that we can find a shared way through conflict and move forward to "a more perfect union," as Americans have done countless times in the past.

The authors work their way from "The Liberty Song" written by Founding Father John Dickerson eight years before the Declaration of Independence to "Yes, We Can" written by the Black Eyed Peas in 2008 when Barack Obama was nominated for a second term for president. They describe the complex roles songs have played in our history. For example, Woody Guthrie wrote "This Land Is Your Land" as a counter to "God Bless America," although both songs celebrate America. Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign wanted to use Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the US" as its anthem, although the song was a critique of the country Reagan envisioned. In addition to retelling the well-known story of Harriet Tubman using gospels to communicate escape-to-freedom messages on the Underground Railroad, Meacham and McGraw recount as well the meaning of songs to Frederick Douglass, who heard them as tragic cries of the enslaved.

I wish the authors and their publisher had figured out a way to provide access to recordings of the songs, which number well over 100. It is contradictory to the book's premise to provide only written versions of songs. Even if the written words rise to the level of poetry, they cannot do justice to the sung versions. That said, I looked for all the songs on YouTube and succeeded in finding all but a handful.

Additionally I wish that Meacham and McGraw had gone deeper in their analyses. For example, they only briefly touch upon what "Dixie" has meant, when, and to whom. Meacham explains that the song was written prior to the Civil War for a minstrel show in NYC. Its lyrics were to be sung by white men in black face to describe how blacks longed for the antebellum south --- the south prior to the Civil War and prior to the emancipation of enslaved blacks. McGraw, a southerner who drove through cotton fields with his step-father as a youngster, candidly writes that he emotionally loves the song while at the same time intellectually understanding that it is racist. Both he and Meacham stop short of saying anything more, although the quintessential American moral dilemma seems to be an elephant in the room.

That said, I highly recommend the book. And listening to and learning from songs and their historical meanings.

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Hal and Michelle

SHOULD BE MANDATORY READING FOR ALL THAT "THINK" THEY KNOW THE STORY OF OUR NATION

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2019

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This book is extraordinarily well written. Music plays such an integral part of each part of our nation reaching to become the "more perfect union". We are not "a perfect union..." Yet, it's what we continually strive toward. It wasn't that long ago when we were drilled on how to hide under our desks as school children in case of Russian attack. It was a common sight to see bomb shelters built on our properties. Now, our children are having drills in case of an "active shooter". Yet, in all of what was going on around us there was a cohesiveness within the nation among the elected officials to keep us safe. The first presidential debate I ever watched was the debate between Kennedy and Nixon. "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." This includes BOTH FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC THREATS. The recognition we have 3 CO-EQUAL branches of government seems to be lost on the present administration. SONGS OF AMERICA is a phenomenal book. To repeat myself should be mandatory reading. After you've read it, please, go through it again. Give thought to each part. If you weren't there...what would you have done/liked to have done. Each one CAN do something to make a difference. It takes a willing heart to take a stand on what you know is wrong according to our Constitution...which is a 'living document'. Be the change you desire to see within this great nation of ours.

Hal

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Aran Joseph Canes

Like a Good Patriotic Song

Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2019

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Rather than provide my opinion on what is certain to be received differently by different readers I’d rather just say what Songs of America is like with the hopes that this will help guide your purchasing decision.

Most of Songs of America is not about the songs themselves. The authors, Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw, believe, along with many others, that America is divided as rarely before. And so they, mostly Meacham, provide a recounting of American history along with reflections on the most popular songs of each era.

Most of this history will be familiar to any high school graduate and I wish more attention had been paid to the music itself. But a consistent, although none too original, theme emerges from the history: the founding of America was an incredible moment in the history of humankind. The story of America is largely the bestowal of the human rights the founders claimed for themselves to a wider and wider circle of Americans. While America may have its blemishes, the American project is something all Americans can be immensely proud of.

In order to appeal to as many Americans as possible, Meacham and McGraw discuss everything from Native American history and culture, to the legacy of the Confederacy, to the African-American experience to the current Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage. In other words, it’s an effort to be as inoffensive and inclusive as possible.

Because of this there is no direct mention of contemporary politics. But the figure of Trump as a divisive figure is not too subtly implicit in the text.

So if you are someone whose version of American history is mostly positive with a strong emphasis on American exceptionalism you will probably like this book no matter what part of the Red/Blue spectrum you fall in. If you view that version of America as largely mythological then don’t expect to find this book very interesting because, as I said above, most of it is history and not musicology.

While not a serious scholarly effort, I welcome efforts to try to heal America’s divisions, even as sugarcoated as this one is, and so gave the book a favorable rating. Potential buyers though should know what to expect: a patriotic retelling of American history which pays attention to the music most popular in each era. In other words, it is kind of like a patriotic song itself. Not too heavy, not too deep, leaving you with a good feeling about the country most us have been born into.

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Kindle Customer Taija

Very Informative

Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2023

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So interesting to find out the background of parts of our history and how the songs at to it.

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Fred Grimbletwinge

An interesting read although not sufficiently critical.

Reviewed in Canada on November 20, 2019

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What I liked about the book was the well supported argument that songs can be a powerful way to unite otherwise disparate and large groups of people.
What I disliked was the lack of critical analysis regarding the perils of song in encouraging the lack of sceptical thinking regarding 'them and us', patriotism and nationalism.

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Deborah Taylor

Interesting book

Reviewed in Canada on January 3, 2020

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This was purchased as a gift for a musician (I was taking a chance). He was delighted with it and is very interested in the history. Good gift to get your musician friends or family.

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