What's your dream? Do you believe that God will answer your prayers so that you can fulfill that dream? Do you really believe that He is faithful? Unrealized dreams can cause deep pain that lasts for years. What takes away that pain? The journey through life is a learning process that each human must endure. I say endure because the learning is not always comfortable. You are not alone in anything you do. The lessons learned and talked about in this book can help anyone who is dealing with trouble, pain, human interaction, or faith. By reading this book, the author hopes you will learn a little about music, a little more about life, and a lot about the love of God.

American music reflects the history of America's people, America's trials, and America's growth. Take an exciting and reflective 30-minute musical journey with Of Thee I Sing!---A Celebration of America's Music. From Native American Indian chants to traditional folk songs, from inspirational spirituals to hot New Orleans ragtime, from jazzy swing to kickin' Broadway 2-beat, from Nashville's Grand Ole Opry to the Detroit Motown Sound, you too can discover and enjoy the sound of America. * Recommended for grades three and up. * Can be used as a program or as a songbook. * Performance time: approximately 30 minutes. * Reproducible Student Pages and Staging Suggestions included.

American music reflects the history of America's people, America's trials, and America's growth. Take an exciting and reflective 30-minute musical journey with Of Thee I Sing!---A Celebration of America's Music. From Native American Indian chants to traditional folk songs, from inspirational spirituals to hot New Orleans ragtime, from jazzy swing to kickin' Broadway 2-beat, from Nashville's Grand Ole Opry to the Detroit Motown Sound, you too can discover and enjoy the sound of America. * Recommended for grades 3 and up. * Can be used as a program or as a songbook. * Performance time: approximately 30 minutes. * Reproducible Student Pages and Staging Suggestions included.

Our national and global affairs are in perilous disarray, to the point where extremely sober observers are saying that we have brought imminent catastrophe upon ourselves and that it is just too late to escape. While candidly admitting the difficulty and the danger, Of Thee I Sing nonetheless insists that something enormously significant and wonderful is actually coming to pass on this planet—that like a chick (out of food and space) pecking its way out of the egg into a whole new world, we are awakening of necessity to a vastly expanded understanding of what we are, where we come from, where we’re going, and what’s going on. We are not headed for doom but for glory, and the United States of America has a vital role to play in that destiny—a role in which each of us claims a share as we choose to awaken. “I love this book. America needs this book. Here are the answers to the horrified questions we keep asking ourselves: ‘How did this happen?’ ‘Who stole our country?’ Peter Childs has chosen every word with lucidity and precision, as he tells exactly how we got here, what we must do to save the great ‘American Experiment,’ and why it matters to the whole world. Read it...we need it!” —Suzy Bookstore

When we talk about patriotism in America, we tend to mean one form: the version captured in shared celebrations like the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance. But as Ben Railton argues, that celebratory patriotism is just one of four distinct forms: celebratory, the communal expression of an idealized America; mythic, the creation of national myths that exclude certain communities; active, acts of service and sacrifice for the nation; and critical, arguments for how the nation has fallen short of its ideals that seek to move us toward that more perfect union. In Of Thee I Sing, Railton defines those four forms of American patriotism, using the four verses of “America the Beautiful” as examples of each type, and traces them across our histories. Doing so allows us to reframe seemingly familiar histories such as the Revolution, the Civil War, and the Greatest Generation, as well as texts such as the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance. And it helps us rediscover forgotten histories and figures, from Revolutionary War Loyalists and the World War I Espionage and Sedition Acts to active patriots like Civil War nurse Susie King Taylor and the suffragist Silent Sentinels to critical patriotic authors like William Apess and James Baldwin. Tracing the contested history of American patriotism also helps us better understand many of our 21st century debates: from Donald Trump’s divisive deployment of celebratory and mythic forms of patriotism to the backlash to the critical patriotisms expressed by Colin Kaepernick and the 1619 Project. Only by engaging with the multiple forms of American patriotism, past and present, can we begin to move forward toward a more perfect union that we all can celebrate.