America on My Mind

America is a giant land and a land of giants. She dangles her toes in the warm Pacific and sips from the wild Atlantic. She wears a dress of flaxen-gold, steel-glue, and forest-green. And she holds in her arms a big-hearted people who have built a colossal civilization from a wilderness. She is diverse, she is complex, and she is well worth knowing. In America on my Mind, you will meet America at her best in a tribute written especially for the book by former President Jimmy Carter. You will gaze into her many faces through more than 200 captivating, full-color photographs by the nation's best photographers, including David Muench, Galen Rowell, Annie Griffiths Belt, and Tom and Pat Leeson. These images will escort you down America's back roads and highways. You will walk her remote trails and soar her spacious skies. You will meet her people-industrious, independent, and engaging-and you will visit the towns and cities they have built. Along the way, you will explore her many moods through the selected quotations of some of America's best writers, naturalists, and statesmen-from Henry David Thoreau, Willa Cather, and Thomas Jefferson to John Steinbeck, Rachel Carson, and John F. Kennedy. And finally, you will hear the optimistic voice of her children through the essays of 100 students from across the nation-winners of the 1990/91 Young Writer's Contest sponsored by the Young Writer's Contest Foundation in cooperation with Ronald McDonald Children's Charities. From mountain peaks to soaring skyscrapers, from sandy beaches to fertile fields, America on My Mind celebrates the beauty, the spirit, and the pride of America.