There is a useful 2026 book by Ben Rhodes titled All We Say:
The battle for American identity: A history in 15 speeches. Google Books has a preview to page 43. It is discussed by Martin Pengelly in an article at The Guardian on
May 26, 2026 titled Obama’s former speechwriter Ben Rhodes examines the US
through its 15 most defining speeches.
On pages 6 and 7 Ben briefly describes his book:
“This book tells the story of our argument over American
identity through fifteen speeches. In a democracy such as ours, a speech is the
purest form of persuasion. You stand in front of a group of people and try to
convince them to believe something and do something about it. Indeed, what
could be more American than the lone voice in front of a crowd, bending history
to its will?
This is not an effort to identify the fifteen greatest
American speeches. Instead, the fifteen speeches here are concerned with the
question of American identity and the battle to define it. Some are iconic;
others have been lost to time. Some are inspiring; others sobering. They’ve
been delivered in war and peace; by elites and outsiders; to persuade and to
prophesy. And they have both reflected and shaped our understanding of what it
means to be American and who gets to decide.
I believe that these speeches open a unique window through
which we can better see our own history. They allow us to relive the story of
America as it has been debated, described, and redirected, in the present
tense, since America’s founding. While I am not a historian, I was a
speechwriter for eight years in Barack Obama’s White House, and I will offer my
perspective on why these speeches succeeded in saying something profound and
consequential about American Identity. What sets a speech apart from the
others? What forces must be harnesses for it to embed itself into a collective
American subconscious?
To begin with, a speech must be authentic: The speaker
should be the only person who is able to deliver it. Of course, what is
said matters, but the most impactful speeches leave people with a sense of why
an argument is being made. So, for each speech in this book, we will spend some
time with the life story of the speaker -to get a sense of where their voice
came from; the experiences that shaped them; the motivation that led them to
deliver it; the context that enabled the authenticity of their words.”
On May 20, 2026, Ben has
a longer discussion titled Why I Wrote All We Say. Stephen Llano at Pro
Rhetoric on June 16, 2026 has yet another article titled Another Speech
Anthology. And David Murray at Writing Boots on June 3, 2026 blogged about how
he Wanted: Someone Else to Write a Review of the Latest Speech Anthology.
Sections and speeches in that book are:
PART I: AMERICAN FOUNDATIONS: REVOLUTION TO CIVIL WAR
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: Founding Compromise 14
RED JACKET: We Have Always Lived Here 30
MARIA STEWART: Knowledge Is Power 49
ALEXANDER STEPHENS: The Cornerstone 73
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: True and Righteous 99
PART II: WHAT KIND OF NATION: RADICAL REPUBLIC TO SUPERPOWER
FREDERICK DOUGLASS: Such Things as Human Rights 125
ANNA DICKINSON: Celebrity Suffragette 155
MARY LEASE: Wall Street Owns This Country 177
LOUIS BRANDEIS: Americanism 192
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT: Four Freedoms 215
PART III: CONTESTED NATION: CIVIL RIGHTS TO MAGA
MARTIN LUTHER KING AND JOHN F. KENNEDY: An American Dream
245
DOLORES HUERTA: You Cannot Pretend That We Do Not Exist
271
RONALD REAGAN: God and Country 287
BARACK OBAMA: Breaking the Racial Stalemate 317
DONALD TRUMP: I Will Win for You 375
The FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT: Four Freedoms speech in
Chapter 10 on pages 215 to 242 is also known as his State of the Union Address given
on January 6, 1941. You can read a transcript at the National
Archives. Ben’s description starting on page 224 says that:
“FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT’S 1941 State of the Union address was
unlike any other in American history, as the president was buoyed by his third
election but shadowed by the prospect of war. The White House speechwriting
team included long-time aides like Harry Hopkins and Sam Rosenman, as well as a
new addition: 44-year-old Robert Sherwood, a playwright who had recently won
his second Pulitzer Prize for a show about Abraham Lincoln. At 6’ 6”, Sherwood
had been rejected by the US Army during World War I; determined to serve, he
fought with the Canadians. The horrors of war, and the experience of being
gassed, rendered him a pacifist until he was roused to support Roosevelt’s
policies in part by Charles Lindbergh. ‘Hitlerism,’ Sherwood recalled thinking,
‘was already powerfully and persuasively in our own midst.’
Just two nights before the speech, Roosevelt met with his
speechwriting team in the upstairs study of the White House residence. The text
was nearly done, but the president was still tinkering with it and had an idea
for a peroration that would tie the speech together. ‘We waited as he leaned far
back in his swivel chair with his gaze on the ceiling,’ Rosenman recalled. ‘The
words seemed to roll off his tongue as though he had rehearsed them many times
to himself.’ The idea was the four freedoms, and the president dictated the
text to his scribes.
On January 6, 1941, exactly eighty years before an America
First president would incite an insurrection, Roosevelt entered the US Capitol.
The atmosphere was charged. Sam Rayburn the house speaker, shattered his gavel
as he brought the House into order. The president gripped the podium to hold
himself upright, the steel braces keeping his powerless legs in place, Tens of
millions of Americans listened to his voice, huddled around radios, many of
them destined to be drafted into the US military or put to work producing arms.
Roosevelt was determined to tell them not just what they might be called to do,
but why.”
An image of a woman reading was cropped from one at Wikimedia
Commons.
