Good evening, and welcome to another edition of Inside the Cover.

Thank you so much for allowing me to have precious part of your PBS Kansas time to visit with you about books and the pleasure and joy that reading can bring to each of us.

I truly valu and appreciate this opportunity I have to be with you in this important, but fun, regard.

Tonight, our show focuses on three books that I find relevant to and supportive of the celebration of 250 year of the United States of America.

It is now time to go inside the cover.

First, let me refer you t and discuss The Boston Massacre: A Family History by Serena Zabin.

This book came out in 2019.

Zabin is a professor of history at Carleton College, and her book delivers a unique people's history of the massacre and the events leading to it.

Zabin focuses on the personal relationships between British soldiers and Bostonians.

She highlights the intimate, everyday interactions, shopping, socializing, and even marriage between the British military familie and the local Boston population.

Five colonist died as a result of the shooting on March 5th, 1770.

With these deaths, the seeds of revolution were planted.

Next, let's go to A Hell o a Storm by Doctor David S Brown, the Horace E Raffensperger Professor of history at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

My copy was a gift from Judge Richard Walker of Newton, and it was copyrighted in 2014.

Subtitled The Battle for Kansas, The End of Compromise, and the coming of the Civil War, It focuses on the year 1854, which, according to Professor Brown, proved to be both Crux and Constellation, a pivotal year of decision that led to immense and dramatic results.

Brown also call the Kansas-Nebraska Act the most lethal piece of legislation to ever clear Congress.

Next, I want to showcase Jill Lepores 2025 book We the People.

Lepore is the David Woods Kemper 41 Professor of American History at Harvard and a professor of law at Harvard Law School.

If that isn't enough, she is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a staff writer at The New Yorker.

She is one of my favorite writers, and I would refer you to our show on her book, These Truths: A History of United States.

We the People is subtitled History of the US Constitution, and it is an essential companion to These Truths.

Her writing is impressive, important, and impactful for those of u who appreciate the opportunity and good fortune to have been born in America in these challenging and often discouraging times.

I suggest that Lepores scholarship is a critical reminder of the fragility of freedom and the rights and privileges we sometimes seem to take for granted.

Next, Walter Isaacson has written a small but important book about the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

In the book, titled The Greatest Sentence Ever Written.

Isaacson explores the statements enduring significance as a foundational statement for American ideals, especially in a time of great national division.

Is a deep dive into the writing, editing, and meaning of this single pivotal sentence.

Is it still relevant?

Was it ever anything more than an aspiration expressed from the perspective of a few men of privilege?

Here, Also see The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk.

Tonight I have offered some recommendations for your semiquincentennial reading list.

I hope you find them of merit.

There are so many books, so little time.

Good night.

And see you next time.

Until then, keep reading and be well.