This year the United States of America will celebrate its 250th anniversary. I was too young by a decade or so to celebrate the Bicentennial, and unless future medicine is very magic I doubt I will witness the Tricentennial. So, I shall be making hay of this year and the “Semiquincentennial”. I am making wild plans to celebrate in reading along three ‘tracks’. While I would normally be reluctant of making grand plans, given my track history (ho ho), this involves primarily history so I think it’s a fair bet I will make progress among at least one of them. I may also try to emphasize American literature I’ve not explored, like Vidal’s Narrative of Empire series, but we’ll see.

Track One: American History. While this is a fairly broad category, I want to approach it from a bit of an oblique, looking at areas of American history I know little about — like the South in the Revolutionary War, or the the Cherokee in the Civil War. I have started doing this already with the sectional divisions of the pre-Civil War era

Track Two: Americans of interest. “All history is biography,” said Emerson. Will be reading about American lives. Biographies, in other words, and intending to represent a cross-track of Americans I admire or am curious about, with a range of vocations. Some of this will muddle with Track One, but I imagine I’ll also be looking at musicians & such who wouldn’t fall into this category. Many years ago I played with the idea of doing an “American History in 50 Lives” series that would begin with say, Columbus, and then incorporate figures like Jefferson, Clay, Tubman, Carnegie, etc to deliver a rich crossection of American history – buuuuuuuuuuut that’s more ambitious than I can take at the moment. Like my “A Century in a Year” idea, which would have begun January 1 in 1900 and concluded in December at 1999, it would entail not only identifying but SOURCING an insane amount of books. (I’m good at thinking up great reading projects, but not so much at executing them.)

Track Three: American Cities. I am playing with the idea — and again, this muddles with Track One — of exploring American history through cities that embody particular eras. So, Boston for the Revolution, Philadelphia for the early Republic, New York for the age of immigration and commerce, Chicago for industrialism, San Francisco for expansion west, etc. I am still mulling over themes and applicable cities. I like reading city histories, so I am cautiously optimistic about this one.

PRELIMINARY reading idea:

• Boston: colonial America
• Philadelphia: revolutionary America
• Charleston & New Orleans: the South-dominated early republic
• Industrialism and civil war: New York, Richmond, and Atlanta
• The drive west: Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles
• 20th century industrialism: Detroit
• The rise of Jabba the State: DC