Whether it’s via their tone, topic, or tenor, certain works just say “America.” Here is one such title, suggested by William J. O’Connor, Ph.D., executive vice president of the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation:

The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln and the Struggle for American Freedom by H.W. Brands

“The Boston Globe calls this gripping work “a tale told by a master storyteller, with a momentum and a power appropriate to the subject. In these pages we have the hare (Brown) and the tortoise (Lincoln)…it is no fable, but instead one of the greatest, but surely the bloodiest, American stories.”

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