Another BookSneeze book. The Portable Patriot, edited by Joel Miller and Kristen Parrish, .
This book looked interesting, collecting documents, speeches, and even sermons that “compose the American soul” as the subtitle says. The book is small (hence the portable title) with the ragged cut pages that make a book feel older. Before each entry is a short description of the person or the event, placing it in context of the history of the nation.
The contents are broken out by time period, from the Mayflower and other beginnings, just before the revolution, during the revolution, the founding, and the first documents of the republic. They have fit a lot of information in here. Of course the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, even some selections from the Federalist Papers. Plus any other writings not as well known. I see us referring to this book for years. As a former home schooler, I can see it being a cool resource for American History.
But I must admit some disappointment. I didn’t think portable would mean it had to be quite so small. Everything runs in together and the descriptive text is really only a few sentences. It is all about the actual documents, but the font and page size doesn’t even make reading the documents easy. I’m not saying it had to be a text book, but I think a different format would have been more pleasurable to hold and read.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
