The Spirit Of America

by Barbara MiIo Ohrbach; Clarkson N. Potter, Inc.; 56 pages.

“We all do share a uniquely American spirit that goes back to the very beginning,” writes Barbara MiIo Ohrbach in this jaunty little compendium of Americana. She taps many sources to invoke that spirit: recipes for traditional fare; bright patriotic chromolithographs; the words of famous Americans; lists of state birds, flowers, and trees; and selections from popular songs and poems, among the latter the entire text of the history of America that Winifred Sackville Stoner assembled from clanging couplets, only the first of which is remembered today: “In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…”