American Journeys
Mark Schenker, retired senior associate dean of Yale College, returns to WWML to present four works of American literature in recognition of this year's 250th anniversary of our nation's Declaration of Independence. These books, by women and men, include fiction and nonfiction and range from the mid-19 to late 20th century.
They span America from Nantucket to Idaho, the Mississippi River Basin, from New Orleans to Minnesota, and a personal quest from a city in Michigan to rural Pennsylvania and Virginia.
These journeys, some historical, some fictional, remind us that our country began with the Puritans' "errand into the wilderness" and continued for centuries with the Manifest Destiny of expansion to the West and with the complex relationship of the North and South.
The series begins with Ahab's mythic quest in Moby Dick and ends with Housekeeping's poignant story of two sisters lost in America more than 100 years later.
