AMERICANON

Exploring the American “bibles”—dictionaries, almanacs, cookbooks, and the like—that have helped shape the nation’s sense of self.

Journalist McHugh examines a long bookshelf of didactic books by which Americans have self-educated. We pride ourselves, she contends, as people who have made themselves out of the common clay, and thus “asking for help becomes at least a little shameful.” Thus, such readily available books help us avoid owning up to our ignorance by asking someone who knows how to bake a cake or spell a word. One key example is Noah Webster’s dictionary of the English language, which helped stabilize wobbly spellings and provided the wherewithal for a national tongue. The McGuffey Readers were an extension of this, premised not just on a national educational system, but also on the conviction that the Christian Bible was “a national text, tying patriotism and a certain kind of Christianity ever closer together.” Less nationalistic in nature, Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book, which has sold 75 million copies, instructed its readers in the fine art of becoming a “successful American housewife,” and Emily Post’s book of etiquette became an essential guide for social climbers who wished to shed their rough roots for urbane polish. McHugh closes with a look at the self-help books of the 1980s, when the anti-capitalist mores of the 1960s gave way to full-on consumerism and became “a multimillion-dollar industry.” Clearly enthusiastic about her subject, the author sometimes finds herself in the tall weeds; her account of the making of the Old Farmer’s Almanac is everything you ever wanted to know, and then much more besides. Early on, McHugh points out that her field contains “a striking absence of nonwhite authors and LGBTQ authors,” for the simple reason that dispensers of advice have usually been White men, and often of a conservative religious bent.

A worthy, capably told look at a small canon of works demonstrating how to do well by doing good.