Whether it’s via their tone, topic, or tenor, certain works just say “America.” Here is one such title, suggested by Elizabeth von Hassell, executive director of the National Sporting Library & Museum in Middleburg, Virginia:

The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman

“Newsweek called this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic about the early days of World War I, first published in 1962, “a brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill’s statement that the first month of World War I was ‘a drama never surpassed.’”

Patriotic Pick is a monthly feature in partnership with the Washington Independent Review of Books.

Patriotic Picks is a monthly feature in partnership with the Washington Independent Review of Books.