From Ben Franklin to MLK, a glorious marathon of oratory

Damned if I know, and you don't know either. This is a rich, rich country -- Lyndon Johnson, in his 1965 speech on voting rights, called it "this great rich, restless country" and argued that "this was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose" -- and amid its wealth is the richness of its spoken word. In 230 years we have had Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural ("We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists") and Woodrow Wilson's war speech ("It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war") and Franklin Roosevelt's eighth State of the Union Address ("We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms"). We have had Huey Long's "Every Man a King" speech and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. We have had Richard Nixon's "Checkers" speech and Reagan's "Challenger" speech.

These speeches and scores of others -- 128 in all, delivered by 77 Americans at times of peace, war, challenge, crisis, reflection , and revolution -- have been deftly assembled by Ted Widmer, director and librarian of the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, in two splendid volumes published by the Library of America. These two volumes are at once keepsakes and reminders, and above all compendiums of the best that has been thought and said by Americans.