Reviewed by Martin Brückner | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.1

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Reviewed by Martin Brückner | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 61.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

A Is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States. By Jill Lepore. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Pp. x, 241. $25.00 cloth, $13.00 paper.) Reviewed by Martin Brückner , University of Delaware
This fascinating study prompts us to explore anew an old question: "What, then, is the American?" For decades, students of intellectual history and literary culture have concentrated on the subclause to Crèvecoeur's famous line: "this new man." Jill Lepore's answer still involves men—a total of seven—but bypasses the familiar androcentric approach to cultural biography. As the title suggests, the book explores the multiple meanings of "character." It examines how a cast of historical characters sought to influence abstract notions of human character (political, ethnic, and cultural) through the use of lexical or ideographic characters (alphabetic writing, hand-signing, and other symbol systems). With this play on "character" in mind, A Is for American recovers a unique cultural dynamic that energized the careers of early American advocates of communication theories and practices. Furthermore, through the study of select individuals, the book is able to focus on several material practices and their attending ideologies, "from arts and letters to technology and progress; from nation to race; from union to disunion" (p. 12).	1
The story, which covers the 1780s to the 1880s, begins and ends predictably and importantly with the heavyweights of American communication history. It turns first to the lexicographer and language reformer Noah Webster and concludes with the founders of global mass communication, the inventors of the telegraph and the telephone, Samuel F. B. Morse and Alexander Graham Bell. Sandwiched between the chapters discussing these figures are portraits of lesser-known practitioners who linked language and its transmission to the ideological construction of "American" character. While the larger story of the book explains how practically all members of the cast were concerned with the transmission and reception of language, the chapter subplots concentrate on the way in which these nineteenth-century Americans and their audiences collectively responded to the Enlightenment ideal of a universal language by pursuing mostly nationalistic goals.	2
It is thus not a great surprise to be reminded that, coincidental with the Peace of Paris in 1783, Webster published his first spelling book, A Grammatical Institute, in which the goals of universal language reform were adapted for a national language reform. For Webster, an ardent Federalist, the proposition of a linguistic standard affecting orthography and pronunciation paralleled the Federalist idea that a nationally unified language could eliminate the practice of regional dialects and quell the emergent sectionalism. Taken to its logical conclusion, Webster's language reform argued that through a uniform and specifically American version of the English language the new citizens could ensure the creation of a distinctly American form of literary—and ultimately national—character.	3
The work of Morse and Bell similarly turned the tools of universal communication to the goals of national interest. Driven by nativist ideas and conspiracy theories, Morse feared (as had Antifederalists before him) that the territorial size of the United States inherently threatened the nation's unity. Hoping to stave off external influences, he imagined telegraphy would not only overcome geographic and sectional distances, but would also consolidate the national community. By the same token, Bell, very much influenced by the aftermath of the Civil War, viewed the introduction of the telephone as a proactive tool designed to "eradicate" sectionalism, "one kind of nation within the nation." He lobbied hard for the implementation of the telephone, not to foster international or universal exchange but to maintain a racially segregated, isolated nation state.	. . .

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