Whether it’s via their tone, topic, or tenor, certain works just say “America.” Here is one such title, suggested by Grateful American™ Book Prize judge Neme Alperstein, a longtime teacher of gifted and talented students in the New York City Public School system:

John Adams by David McCullough. One of the nation’s Founding Fathers comes vividly to life in this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography that Library Journal called “an extraordinary portrait of an extraordinary man who has not received his due in America’s early political history but whose life work significantly affected his country’s future.”

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