An intelligent, deeply original, finely crafted work of nonfiction. We should look at the world through books more often.

This book came at the perfect time for me as I set out for a year of teaching all juniors (and American lit) for the first time. I've been rethinking how I approach this course, and this has provided a wealth of information and potential questions for me and my students.

I've never been a proponent of the "canon" since, let's face it, a lot of the books in it are boring and irrelevant to the students in front of us. Sure, some of them are paragons of excellent writing, but aren't other books just as worthy? McHugh's book looks outside what we would consider the traditional literary canon to bestselling nonfiction pieces, a canon of public consensus. Some of these books are ones that seem unbiased and without agenda, but McHugh describes the historical context surrounding these texts, as well as the morals and qualities of Americanness that these books project into society, advertently or inadvertently. Books like Noah Webster's Dictionary to Betty Crocker's Cook Book all carry with them a message of what it means to be American.

If you're a history or literature buff, this one is for you! You'll be even more convinced that everything published in America will teach you something about being an American, for better or worse.

AMERICANON by Jess McHugh is a work of non-fiction which seeks to provide "An Unexpected U.S. History in Thirteen Bestselling Books." Books about books are always fun and this one immediately calls to mind titles with similar lists like Promised Land (2008) by Jay Parini and Who the Hell is Pansy O’Hara? (2008) by Jenny Bond. As one might expect, there is even a bit of overlap in chosen titles (Parini also selected Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and How to Win Friends and Influence People while Bond also wrote about Emily Post's Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home). Setting fiction aside, McHugh has focused more narrowly on "how-to" texts – "dictionaries, school primers, cookbooks, how-to guides, and self-help manuals .... that underneath their surface are the blueprints for American values that endured long after publication." I was initially drawn to her selection of The McGuffey Readers – I have found memories of sharing those with students on Pioneer Days at our local elementary school. And, I learned quite a bit reading about Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook, including how female home economists like Marjorie Child Husted were treated at General Mills. Referring to her collection, McHugh readily notes "a striking absence of nonwhite authors and LGBTQ authors," saying "privilege serves as an echo chamber in which only certain voices emerge." An entertaining piece of cultural history, it would be interesting to see the "sequel" to AMERICANON; what other titles (maybe Our Bodies, Ourselves or Black Like Me or Silent Spring or All the President's Men) have had impact in the past few decades? What titles will our current students call to mind (perhaps The New Jim Crow or Lean In or Between the World and Me or The Sixth Extinction)?

this book was a really interesting look back at how certain books changed american history. As a history major and book worm, this was an excellent merging of two of my primary interests.

This was an incredibly well-written, accessible history book that brought to life a lot of aspects of American history that are often overlooked by other history books. While I was the surprised by the books highlighted within (I was expecting such books as The Great Gatsby and Moby-Dick) I think the books selected worked really well in relaying the points that the author was trying to get across. Also, I've read a number of books about the "Great American Classics", so it was nice to dive into other, less talked about books for a change.

The author is clearly educated on the topic presented and did a great job of making her work accessible to us less educated readers. I would highly recommend this book to lovers of literature and/or history or just those who like learning new things or getting a different perspective on a topic you're already familiar with.

Which books do you think made America what it is today?
You’re probably thinking of classic works of literature: Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, something along those lines. That’s what I expected when I opened Americanon, Jess McHugh’s brand new work from Dutton Books. But the word “unexpected” in the subtitle could not be more apt for what this book had in store.
First, McHugh doesn’t have in mind the kind of literature you read once and put back on the shelf. She, for quite a compelling reason, has chosen books that Americans have bought in the tens of millions and almost habitually grab off the shelf. These books include Noah Webster’s Speller and Dictionary, the McGuffey Readers, The Old Farmer’s Almanac, and Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book. Why would McHugh choose these instead of more timeless works of literature? Because if one wants to understand what books made America what it is, one must start with the books that Americans used and reused. As McHugh explains:
The foundation for American popular culture can be located more easily not in highbrow literary texts — or even in the Constitution, a text that fewer than half of Americans read— but in the ordinary, instructional books that average Americans have consulted every day.
What better way to understand a people than to look at the books they consumed most — not the ones they were told to read by teachers or parents, or read once and put on a shelf, but the ones they returned to again and again, with questions about everything from spelling to sex?
OK, I say to myself, you’ve convinced me that this is an interesting way to look at the history of the American spirit. But every author in this list of books is white, and most of them are male. If that’s not enough, a lot of the ideas in this book are super outdated. Are we just going to nostalgically celebrate America’s history or something?
That’s where McHugh proves me wrong again. She’s not interested in nostalgia here, but a book-centric biopsy of the American soul. Sometimes that soul is bright and optimistic, and sometimes it’s dark and depraved. Often, and in each of her selections, it’s both at the same time.
Of the thirteen books in McHugh’s analysis, not a single one is unequivocally praised or condemned. She not only investigates the history of each book but its messages and legacy as well. That leaves each one with a mixed bag, full of fruit both good and rotten. McHugh is clear about this strategy in her introduction:
Our society is more uncontrollable, disparate, and diverse than these authors would want us to believe, but their books served as a salve for national tumult, and their vision of the “good American” gives us fresh insight into our own identity.
Up until very recently, our bestselling “authoritative” texts in this genre were written primarily by white men, with a large number from fervently religious communities. Americanon is as much about what is left out and repressed by these books as what is in them.
So, while each book is responsible for either creating or reinforcing certain aspects of the American spirit, it is just as important to McHugh to convey the aspects of the American ideal that are left by the wayside. Or, in some cases, she uncovers how the stories America likes to tell about itself are simply not as tidy as we like to think.

As an example, McHugh tidily relays both the good and the messy of Webster’s work:

In his memoirs, Douglass describes teaching himself how to write using nothing except Webster’s 1825 Spelling Book and some copy paper left over by his enslaver’s son. Each Monday afternoon when the mistress of the house went to town, Douglass would take this book — more precious to him than anything else — and teach himself how to write over the course of several painstaking years. He would go on to pen one of the most important autobiographies of the century, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Without Webster’s ubiquitous text being available in just about every corner of the United States, it’s unclear how Douglass would have learned to write at all. There is something particularly American about the democratic values the speller, and later dictionary, strived to embody. What other book would teach both the son of an enslaved person and the descendent of a diplomat the same skill? And for the same price? The dictionary and speller would become important symbols of the flawed but deeply entrenched American belief that anyone — even someone born into the horrors of chattel slavery — could change his situation through sheer hard work and determination. And yet, simply because both Douglass and Benjamin Franklin’s grandchild used the same book does not mean they therefore lived in an equal society. It’s a vast psychological leap to hold up Douglass as an example of meritocracy in America, social mobility, and the possibility of the self-made man. The fact that he was able to escape and become successful, in part through the use of Webster’s book, did not mean that he lived in a system in which everyone was given an equal chance, or (as was the case for generations of enslaved people) any chance at all.
This is where Americanon excels: in celebrating the parts of each work that are worthy of celebration while not dismissing the problematic aspects of each work and its promulgated ideas. (Also: Webster apparently invented the word “immigrant”, changing the way Americans think about people to focus on someone coming in from out there rather than simply moving, as “emigrant” had meant beforehand.)
Proponents of the books and their detractors will both be disappointed in Americanon, but that’s why it is written for the rest of us: those who want to hear the truth about who we are, whatever that means. If you want a surprising book that isn’t afraid to sift through the good and the bad to handle the truth effectively, read Americanon.

I received a review copy Americanon courtesy of Dutton Books and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.

narrative of American history through the lens of best-selling, nonfiction, how-to books. McHugh divides ten chapters using the following books: The Old Farmer’s Almanac; Webster’s Dictionary; Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography; McGuffey Readers; Handbook to American Womanhood; Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home; How to Win Friends and Influence People; Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook; Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. describes them as “American ‘bibles’: those dog-eared books for daily life that ostensibly taught readers one subject, all while subtly instructing them about their role in society and their responsibilities to family and to country.” McHugh contends that “the gap between reality and the mythology that these books represent can offer a glimpse into our shifting understanding of what being American means.” readers can learn a lot about society by what nonfiction, how-to books convey, who writes them, how well they sell, and how they appear in national media, which McHugh also explores

One of the books in our library is my mother-in-law's copy of Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book. The volume show the stains and wear of fifty-nine years of hard use.

Laura prided herself on her abilities in the kitchen, especially as a baker of cookies and pies. Any family gathering she would have two pies to choose from, served a few hours after a big dinner.

After reading the chapter on the Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book in Americanon, I took the cook book from the shelf and discovered Laura had a first edition!

The Picture Cook Book would have saved me loads of trouble as I learned to cook. Everything a new cook needed to know could be found in these pages, starting with the basics of measuring.

Jess McHugh writes that Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book was only outsold by the Bible, earning it a place in her list of books that form the American Canon, books that formed American's identity while enforcing the status quo of the white, European, upper class.

Betty Crocker was a fictional creation used to sell products and educate homemakers, but she became a friend in need to millions of her fans who wrote her revelatory letters. Her advice aided women through depressions and war rationing. And she promoted General Mills products, such as Bisquick, which was always in my mom's kitchen.

Other books in the 'canon' were as ubiquitous in American homes, inspiring and informing readers. The people who wrote these books did not always live in alignment with what they preached. The values Americans discovered in the books were traditional, not progressive. Women were domestic goddesses, immigrants were to be Americanized, LGBTQ were sick criminals, and people of color were ignored, marginalized, or downright thrust into racist stereotypes.

The most modern popular books are the self-help books that sell a kind of religion of the self, proposing that it is in our power to be healthy, wealthy, and happy. (Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography had a heavy dose of such advice, as well.) The authors of these books had personal hobby-horses to promote. Many were unqualified to give medical, sexual, financial, or mental health advice.

The language we speak and the spelling we use, our agreed upon social interactions, even our sexual life, have been based upon these books. For better, and often definitely for worse, they formed our national identity and character.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Rather than recommending this book by saying it was good or interesting or whatever, I hope you will find it more compelling if I tell you that I neglected all other unfinished books – some (like this one) a free advance review copy, others actually purchased – in other to read this somewhat eccentric piece of non-fiction.

I say “eccentric” because there were several small odd …. um…. well …. aspects? mannerisms?… in this book. They flow from the book's title and maybe made this book a little more difficult to read that it might be, although I plowed happily on to the end nevertheless. The first, I think, was the title neologism “Americanon”, which I think the author is hoping might catch on as a “real” word, meaning, eventually honored with the dignity of a dictionary entry and so forth. He uses the word (in italics) throughout the book in sentences like: “Trauma shaped all the authors in Americanon, but …”

To begin with, how do you say it? “American on”? Nah. “America non” America non what? After a little reading, I arrived at the conclusion it would be “Ameri-canon”, which I think is correct even after finishing. I initially thought, on the basis of this pronunciation, that this was going to be another dreary exploration about whether we should be (for example) relegating the prose of William Faulkner to the dustbin of history in favor of writers who did not labor as mightily to glorify the right of one group of people to hold another group of people in slavery.

But no, this book is not about the “canon” in sense of “a group of books that certain experts have agreed are essential.” It could more accurately, in my sight, be titled something like “A History of Selected American Self-Help Books.” I think this would be much less confusing, but I understand that accuracy is not the only consideration, and that a book with the title I suggested might not be the type that sells in truly publisher-delighting quantities.

The second odd thing is the “thirteen bestselling books.” At no time are the thirteen books listed by name. The book only has ten chapters, and the self-help book which is the subject of the chapter only appears in six of the ten. In some cases, even when the book is not specifically mentioned in the chapter title, the identity of the book is clear, e.g., Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. But in other cases, more than one book is mentioned in a chapter, and it's unclear if some of the books mentioned is part of the titular thirteen or not.

I don't think this small shortcoming actually detracts from the value of the ideas in the book which, to repeat, are very interesting. It was just distracting. Just put a list of the thirteen books before the introduction already! When you put the actual words “thirteen books” in the title, people will want to know which ones they are!

OK, so, after a lot of carping, so I'd like to move onto some praise.

With the world apparently spinning out of control in an alarming way, it's reasonable to wonder how we got into this massive mess. This book might give us Americans some clue. The rest of you are on your own.

The author fairly convincingly connects the dots of common ideas about worthwhile living and self-improvement from the writings of Ben Franklin and Noah Webster through those of Dale Carnegie and the committee known as Betty Crocker, and beyond. For example, we were from the beginning fairly atomized and individualistic in our efforts to live a worthwhile and meaningful life, and we also felt that whatever problems we had could be solved by convincing ourselves to believe certain things and act certain ways. Disciplined individual action was always the answer. Organized collective action, whether it was joining a labor union or obeying the instructions of public health experts, was never the answer.

A “cultural historian” quoted in this book (Kindle location 3641) puts it like this:

There's nothing in American culture to have created the expectation that there is something larger than the self. On the one hand, that's what makes America great: we are a nation of free individuals. And it is also what makes the U.S. a frightening, cold, often mean-spirited place, because we have no help for help or assistance from anyone outside our own person or perhaps our immediate circle of friends. One result of our singularity is that we are always thinking: “There has to be a personal solution, and if I can't find it, then that's my own fault.”

Another point from this book: We never required those who codified our behavior to be examples of the behavior they were championing. Therefore, we see nothing odd in the sanctity of marriage and child-bearing championed by the spectacularly divorced and the childless, as this book chronicles. This seemed relevant to our present situation in the light of the otherwise-inexplicable admiration than the clearly non-observant former President Trump received from those who purported to be devoutly religious.

In short, the author succeeded in extracting some interesting and perhaps even profound ideas out of a pile of books that might be dismissed, collectively, as a dusty museum of irrelevant relics and absurd rules from a backward era. I respect anyone who is trying to figure out what the past can tell us about the present and maybe the future, no matter what their stylistic and titular eccentricities.

I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Penguin Random House via Netgalley.

A totally fascinating view on American History through the lens of non-fiction books which have influenced current culture. A nice read for the non-fiction buff.

As a high school American literature teacher, I have spent many hours over the course of my career thinking about the word, "canon." At its most simple, canon is a shelf of books that are agreed-upon embodiments of culture and heritage. And unlike biblical canon, which has maintained the same 66 books for the last 1700 years, the American canon is dynamic from the high school through the graduate level: which titles stay? which should be added? are there too many dead white men? what about Native authors? The debate goes on and on.

And for some reason, the canon that I have discussed ad nauseum though the years has always been focused on works of fiction.

Jess McHugh adds a clever end-around to this constant debate with her book, Americanon, interweaving the histories of resource/nonfiction titles into the story of American culture. The fact that these titles sold many times the number of copies of, say, The Great Gatsby or The Last of the Mohicans is one of many facts McHugh uses to construct her alternative history of American culture.

The titles she highlights include
The Old Farmer's Almanac
Noah Webster's speller and dictionary
the McGuffey Reader
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
two 19th-century books on home economics by Claire Beecher
Emily Post's Etiquette
How to Win Friends and Influence People
the post-WW2 Betty Crocker picture cookbook
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex*, and
The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People

Working her way chronologically through American history, McHugh uses the texts to show emerging forms of identity: the evolution of the role of women in the home, the recurring theme of aspiration and self-improvement, and the protestant-moralistic underpinnings of American culture, which she traces from the 1790s through the 1990s.

In her examination of the books, McHugh illustrates their role in history and includes interviews with scholars and editors and reinforce each book's legacy. Her reporting is comprehensive, and her analysis is consistent and leads to an illuminating conclusion in the epilogue.

While I have read from four or five of the titles, one element that I felt was missing from the galley I read (so generously provided by NetGalley and Dutton Books in an exchange for an honest review) was examples of actual text (and textual analysis) from the books themselves. This might enhance readers' appreciation of the "thirteen bestselling books" and save them a trip to the dustier shelves of their local library.

Ultimately the idea of a "canon" is illusory, but Jess McHugh has done American readers a great service by returning hugely influential resource texts to the canonical discussion.