Picturing America for Public Libraries

Project Scholar
Suzanne Ozment, Ph.D.
Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Professor of English
University of South Carolina Aiken

Series Description
Images from the Picturing America collection celebrate scenic as well as manmade wonders—those carved by the forces of nature and those crafted by human ingenuity. Some also suggest the ways in which human experience is shaped, even defined, by place.

The books chosen for Places in the Heart present a similar message and are set in an urban ghetto (Brothers and Keepers), along one of the great scenic rivers in North America (A River Runs through It), and in small towns from Colorado (Plainsong), to Iowa (Gilead), to Maine (Empire Falls). In each, there is a deep connection between the characters and their surroundings, between them and the places they call home.

Central Reading List
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Related Picturing America Images
5A—View from Mt. Holyoke (the Oxbow)
5B—Cover Illustration for The Last of the Mohicans
8A—Looking Down Yosemite Valley, CA
9A—The Veteran in a New Field
11A—John Biglin in a Single Scull
13A—Brooklyn Bridge, 1929
13B—Autumn Landscape—River of Life
14B—Brooklyn Bridge, 1919–20
16B—Fallingwater
19A—Freedom of Speech
19B—Selma-to-Montgomery March for Voting Rights in 1965
20A—Cityscape I
20B—Ladder for Booker T. Washington