A root bear float

Anywhere, USA

Nothing expresses summer fun, family, and good times quite like a root beer float.

On summer nights, when my dad was out at sea, my mother would sometimes let my siblings and me have root beer floats for dinner - much to my dad's dismay when he heard about it years later.

When I had to return to work sooner than I wanted after the birth of our second son - my husband was a graduate student - I needed something to look forward to at the end of the work week. We came up with the plan of having a Friday dinner of grilled hamburgers, barbequed potato chips and, for dessert, root beer floats. This September marks the 24th year of the same Friday night menu - and the dessert may surprise our guests but never fails to delight.

Debra

Porgy and Bess

Charleston, SC

Written by an American Jewish composer, George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" is a full-on opera that celebrates the lives and loves of poor black people. It has some of the most beautiful, powerful arias in all of opera, including the searing "My Man's Gone Now" - raw grief in musical form.

Charles

Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

Zuckerman's Farm, IA

Charlotte's Web may be the true "Great American novel." It takes place on a farm, it's optimistic, and it focuses on change. Charlotte and Fern are the manifestations of the relentless nature of change and the cycles of our lives. It is Wilbur, however, who is able to escape his preordained destinty, and in doing so prove that love and friendship have power over death.

Shelley

The Fender Stratocaster

Fullerton, CA

It epitomizes rock-n-roll. I don't think I need to write another word. It is so obvious.

Paul

the Carnegie Library

Pittsburgh PA

Steel mogul Andrew Carnegie funded this great resource ... and dozens more in Pennsylvania and across the country as a way to educate and elevate the working man. They collectively are premier institutions of the species library.

Jared

Johnny Cash

The US

"I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die" must be one of the most disturbing statements in American music--and when the crowd at Fulsom Prison cheers for the statement, one wonders what is happening. Is Johnny Cash speaking for prisoners? Understanding where they are coming from? Justifying their actions? Yet the music is upbeat. I think it captures something essential about America--dark underbelly with glistening happy-dappy surface.

Lauren

Our Town

Grover’s Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America; North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God

OUR TOWN is America at its purest and most yearning a tale of small town life suffused with the mortality that looms over us all, a timeless document of a time gone by yet ever-present. Far from a high school play, as it is often categorized, it encompasses existence in microcosm, and it endlessly reflective of wherever we are in our lives, even prison:
http://www.hesherman.com/2013/06/03/address-sing-sing-prison-grovers-corners-ny-the-mind-of-god/
A masterpiece of experimental theatre that has been embraced as if it were a conventional drama.

Howard

"I can't get started with you" song

anywhere USA

Like "Anything Goes", the lyrics of this song can be updated to fit today's culture. I requested this song in a bar in Manhattan in 1959, and the singer gave us his updated version. "I've been consulted by Franklin D, Great Garbo has asked me to tea" became "Ingemar showed me his favorite punch, Bridget Bardot has asked me to lunch". Wonderful!!!!

Mary Lou

"Gone With the Wind," Selznick's 1939 movie

Hollywood, CA

Adapted from a novel by a best-selling author, the film is brilliantly acted and beautifully produced—with Oscar-winning performances. Moreover, it vividly and movingly portrays the Southern aspect of the War Between the States. Margaret Mitchell's singular book is not just a Civil War saga; it is a chronicle of the volatile relationship between two iconic characters: Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara. The book continues to sell; the film's screening is always a stellar occasion.

Mervyn

The Empire State Building

New York, NY

This building is a visual manifestation of the American values of ambition, commerce, skill, innovation, power, expansiveness, energy, efficiency, and strength, all expressed with a striking functional beauty. It was started in the boom time of the 1920s and completed at the start of the Great Depression. It rises in the middle of Manhattan, America's quintessential urban center, and sums up that world capital's dynamic materialism. I grew up in its shadow and still marvel at it after decades of admiration.

Kevin

Kate Chopin's novel, "The Awakening"

In and around New Orleans, Louisiana

Kate Chopin's novel, "The Awakening," written around the turn of the century, concerns the unraveling of a marriage and the concurrent awakening of a woman's independence of mind, spirit and body. It is a relatively short, book, often described as "Delicious" because of its rich descriptions of the main character's awakening from a stultifying existence and toward the very uncertain unknown future. The novel was "rediscovered" by feminists in the 1970s and has been republished and taught at colleges across the nation since then. Reading it is a revelation.

Joe

Aretha Franklin

Detroit, Michigan

Aretha was one of the first if not the first female singer to take the gospel style of singing into American pop music. You can still hear her influence in pop singers today from Christina Aguilara to Beyonce.

Denis

the Sear's Catalogue

Fort Worth, TX

A mall before malls, the internet without electricity; this bible of capitalism was a barometer of American taste and mores for almost a century. Everything from houses to to hockey sticks has been listed in the catalogue at one time.

I remember making my Christmas lists by leafing through the toy section. I was enough of a nerd to note page and catalogue numbers to help out Santa.

How many other American Icons were sold or stylistically alluded to in this big book of the American dream?

James

American muscle cars

Detroit, but also all over the world

There aren't anything like them anywhere in the automotive history. I'm from another country, and whenever I think of America, I think of muscle cars among other things. They were crude and unsophisticated, fast only in the straight line, and badly made, too, but they have the aura of good American times that probably never were - the image of America that is gone, that current crop of new retro mustangs, Camaros, challenger can never capture however hard they try, but try they do.

Shingo

"On the Road," Jack Kerouac

USA 1950s

In the USA in the 1950's, everything was on hold, suspended like dust particles in a beam of light in a closed, claustrophobic room. The particles themselves had life but no one had found a meaningful way to bind them together or give them a direction. Kerouac's "On the Road" did both; it caused so many accepted things to change: genres of literature, ways to experience growing up and methods of self-expression were never the same, and the new ones taking their place gave rise to the cultural and political revolution of the 1960's.

ellen

The Glass Menagerie

Book and Play NYC

This play is opening on Broadway this week and it has had many iterations . The current one is an interpretation by an English Director . It has been performed all over the world and a movie version also exists.

Michael

Henry Chapman Mercer

Doylestown, Pa.

Henry Chapman Mercer 1856-1930
Collector of pre industrial American tools, transportation, tile.
Builder of "Concrete Castles"

Andrew

Fifty Shades of Grey

Seattle

Even though Fifty Shades of Grey was written by a Brit, it is set in American Seattle, but beyond that, it took a female Brit to reveal a hidden, deep- seated American secret about romantic dominance and submission. Yes, a stuffy class conscious Brit uncovering what Yanks actually crave in secret, as a loving expression, despite American society's public Puritanical posture. Indeed, American women flocking to book signings - quite contrary to standard views of feminism. Finally in the American 21st century, anything goes in being bound.

Ralph

The Terminator (movies)

Hollywood

"The Terminator" has moved far beyond a series of hugely successful movies that made Arnold Schwarzenegger into a megastar. It has entered politics ("Governator")and music ("Cellonator" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9t1kicp2jE)and "I'll be back" is #37 on the AFI's list of movie quotes. It has even crossed over into scientific research as shown in this excerpt from a Science Daily report: "...he says the polymer behaves as if it was alive, always healing itself and has dubbed it a "terminator" polymer -- a tribute to the shape-shifting, molten T-1000 terminator robot from the Terminator 2 film."

Jeffrey

deerslayer/hawkeye

tri state area (Ny,Nj,Pa)

Have you ever read the leatherneck novels? this is wonderful stuff! I just wish the world understood.

mike