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.
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