Join Square Books and Lee Clay Johnson, Gary Fisketjon, and David Samuels from County Highway newspaper in honoring the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with 250 Great American Things—a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the best of America.
County Highway is honoring the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by gathering a raft of some of America’s finest essayists, humorists, fiction writers, and other prose stylists and wise-asses to remind us of what makes America great. The answers, some deadpan, and others only mildly tongue-in-cheek, include lawn-mowers, gas grills, Hanna-Barbera cartoons, cowboy boots, catcher’s mitts, light-bulbs, hairspray, chicken-wire fencing, and 242 other entries in what is sure to be the most amusing and least-tiresome tribute to a nation that occasionally commemorates the past by staging gaudy parades or engaging in bouts of solemn introspection but thrives most of the time on forgetting its history and making new stuff.
Given the bitter political divisions that render Americans capable of agreeing on anything of importance, we don’t claim to list the “greatest” American things, nor do we rank them in any order besides the alphabetical. Rather, the greatness of each entry will speak for itself, and for the nation that we have built together —by solving problems that needed solving, through flashes of off-kilter genius and intuition, and by kidding around.
About the authors
Lee Clay Johnson is the award-winning author of our first Panamerica title, Bloodline, as well as a contributor to 250 Great American Things.
Gary Fisketjon is the fiction editor of County Highway and a contributor to 250 Great American Things.
David Samuels is the editor-in-chief of County Highway and co-editor of 250 Great American Things.
About County Highway
County Highway is a 20-page broadsheet produced by actual human beings, containing the best new writing you will encounter about America. It features reports on the political and spiritual crises that are gripping our country and their deeper cultural and historical sources; regular columns about agriculture, civil liberties, animals, herbal medicine, and living off the grid, mentally and physically; essays about literature and art, and an entire section devoted to music.
About the Author
