The Smithsonian Institution is America's largest and most cherished repository for the objects that define our common heritage. The author, its Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture, has for decades served as a driving force in the effort of our national museums to tell America's whole story. This book is the culmination of a broad effort, led by the author and involving all the Smithsonian's national museums and more than a hundred of its top scholars and curators, to select a set of objects that could collectively represent the American experience. Each entry pairs the history of each object with the place it has come to occupy in our national memory. He sheds new light on familiar objects such as the Star-Spangled Banner, Abraham Lincoln's stovepipe hat, Dorothy's ruby slippers, Julia Child's kitchen, the giant pandas, and the space shuttle Discovery, including the often astonishing tales of how each made its way into the Smithsonian. Other objects, like the suffragists' "Great Demand" banner and the Tuskegee flyer, will be eye-opening new discoveries for many, but no less evocative of the most poignant and important moments of American history. Still others, like Sitting Bull's drawing book, Cesar Chavez's union jacket, and the Enola Gay bomber, illustrate difficult chapters in the nation's history. Also included are behind-the-scenes insight into controversies arising from their exhibition at the Smithsonian.

Before Columbus: 525 Million Years Ago to 1492. Burgess shale fossils ; Bald eagle ; Clovis stone points ; Mississippian birdman copper plate. -- New World: 1492 to Mid-Eighteenth Century. Christopher Columbus's portrait ; Spanish Mission hide painting of Saint Anthony ; Pocahontas's portrait ; Plymouth Rock fragment ; Slave shackles ; Americæ Nova Tabula (map). -- Let Freedom Ring: 1760s to 1820s. Declaration of Independence ; George Washington's uniform and sword ; Benjamin Franklin's walking stick ; Gilbert Stuart's Lansdowne portrait of George Washington ; Star-Spangled Banner ; Thomas Jefferson's bible. -- Young Nation: Late Eighteenth century to 1850s. Conestoga wagon ; Eli Whitney's cotton gin ; John Deere's steel plow ; Isaac Singer's sewing machine ; Nauvoo Temple sun stone. -- Sea to Shining Sea: 1800 to 1850s. Lewis and Clark's pocket compass ; John Bull steam locomotive ; Samuel Colt's revolver ; Morse-Vail telegraph ; Mexican army coat ; Gold discovery flake from Sutter's Mill ; Martha, the last passenger pigeon. -- A House Divided: 1850 to 1865. Frederick Douglass's ambrotype portrait ; Harriet Tubman's hymnal and shawl ; Emancipation Proclamation pamphlet ; Christian Fleetwood's Medal of Honor ; Appomattox Court House furnishings ; Abraham Lincoln's hat. -- Manifest Destiny: 1845 to Early Twentieth Century. Albert Bierstadt's Among the Sierra Nevada, California ; King Kamehameha III's feather cape ; American buffalo ; Sitting Bull's drawing book ; Bugle from the U.S.S. Maine. -- Industrial Revolution: 1865 to Early Twentieth Century. Alexander Graham Bell's telephone ; Thomas Edison's lightbulb ; Frédéric Bartholdi's Liberty ; Andrew Carnegie's mansion ; Ford model T ; Wright brothers' Kitty Hawk Flyer ; Bakelizer plastic maker. -- Modern Nation: 1870s to 1929. James Whistler's Harmony in Blue and Gold: the Peacock Room ; Bernice Palmer's Kodak Brownie camera ; Helen Keller's watch ; Suffragists' "Great Demand" banner ; Ku Klux Klan robe and hood ; World War I gas mask ; Louis Armstrong's trumpet ; Scopes "Monkey Trial" photograph ; Spirit of St. Louis ; Babe Ruth autographed baseball. -- Great Depression: 1929 to 1940. Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Fireside Chat" microphone ; John L. Lewis's union badge ; Marian Anderson's mink coat ; Dorothy's ruby slippers ; Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land". -- Greatest Generation: 1941 to 1945. U.S.S. Oklahoma postal hand stamps ; Spirit of Tuskegee ; "We Can Do It!" poster of Rosie the riveter ; Japanese American World War II internment art ; Audie Murphy's Eisenhower jacket ; Enola Gay. -- Cold War: 1946 to 1991. Fallout shelter ; Mercury Friendship 7 ; Huey helicopter ; Pandas from China ; Berlin Wall fragment. -- New Frontiers: 1950s to 1980s. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine ; Jacqueline Kennedy's inaugural ball gown ; Julia Child's kitchen ; The pill and its dispenser ; Neil Armstrong's space suit ; "Mr. Cycle" PCR machine ; Space shuttle Discovery. -- Civil Rights: 1947 to Now. Greensboro lunch counter ; Muhammad Ali's boxing gear ; Bob Dylan poster by Milton Glaser ; Cesar Chavez's union jacket ; Gay civil rights picket signs ; AIDS memorial quilt panel. -- Pop Culture: Mid-Twentieth Century to Now. Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse ; RCA television set ; Chuck Berry's Gibson guitar ; Katharine Hepburn's Oscars ; Hope diamond ; Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe ; McDonald's golden arches sign ; Kermit the Frog ; Star Wars' R2-D2 and C-3PO. -- Digital Age: 1945 to Now. ENIAC ; Apple's Macintosh computer ; Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway. -- New Millennium: 2000 to the Future. New York Fire Department engine door from September 11 ; Shepard Fairey's Barack Obama "Hope" portrait ; David Boxley's Tsimshian totem pole ; Giant Magellan telescope -- What's not included? -- Old things, new studies -- Object specifications and photographic credits -- Time line of American history.