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Informationen zum Autor Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. 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 has two New York Times bestselling books to his credit, and has acted in such movies as Friday Night Lights and The Blind Side . Klappentext An adaptation for young readers of the outstanding adult bestseller by Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Jon Meacham and Grammy Award–winning artist Tim McGraw celebrating America and the music that shaped it. Songs of America explores the music of important times in our history—the stirring pro- and anti-war music of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, World Wars I and II, and the Vietnam War; the folk songs and popular music of the Great Depression, the fight for women’s rights, and the Civil Rights movement; and the music of both beloved and lesser-known poets, musicians, and songwriters from Colonial times to the twenty-first century. Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham and Grammy Award–winning artist Tim McGraw present the songs of patriotism and protest that gave voice to the politicians and activists who moved the country forward, seeking to fulfill America’s destiny as the land of liberty and justice for all. Readers will recognize pages from the American songbook—examples include “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Born in the U.S.A.”—and will be introduced to lesser-known but equally important works that have inspired Americans to hold on to the tenets of freedom at the roots of our nation. Adapted from the adult bestseller, Songs of America: Young Readers Edition highlights the unique role music has played in uniting and shaping a nation. Leseprobe 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 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 . . . and I verily believ...
