All We Say

The Battle for American Identity: A History in 15 Speeches

By: Ben Rhodes

Narrated by: Ben Rhodes

What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? This sweeping history of the United States told through fifteen speeches relives the battle over American identity, from a New York Times bestselling author and one of President Barack Obama’s former speechwriters.

“At a time of moral and political drift, Ben Rhodes reminds us what American greatness actually sounds like, and what it means.”—Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies

For 250 years, we have debated what it means to be American. This question shaped the compromises in our Constitution and the arguments we’ve been having ever since—spawning abolitionism, secession, and civil war; populism, mass migration, and global leadership; movements for reform and the backlashes to them. In All We Say, Ben Rhodes tells the story of fifteen speeches—some iconic, others long forgotten—which have both shaped and reflected the argument Americans have been having from our founding to the intense divisions of our time.

Through riveting and beautifully rendered accounts of the people, movements, and moments that produced these speeches, Rhodes traces the history of our battle over identity. The result is a singular and revealing portrait of America itself: a nation divided between two stories—one of inheritance, power, and exclusion, the other of equality, striving, and belonging. Drawing on a decade writing for Barack Obama, Rhodes also shows us how words can redirect a nation, what makes a speech enduring, and why oratory is a unique form of persuasion in American democracy.

From Benjamin Franklin’s call for compromise at the Constitutional Convention, to Alexander Stephens’ case for white supremacy as the cornerstone of the Confederacy; from Martin Luther King’s dream of true equality to Donald Trump’s rallying cry against democracy itself, these speeches remind us that history is a living argument. At a time when American identity—and truth—is contested, All We Say offers a fresh and powerful look at who we really are and who we could still become.

Critic reviews

“An absorbing primer of the argument we can’t escape, the history of a question our nation is still trying to answer, All We Say is—like its author—brilliant, generous, and wise. At a time of moral and political drift, Ben Rhodes reminds us what American greatness actually sounds like, and what it means.”—Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies

“It’s a brilliant conceit—explore the longstanding debate over American identity through a close examination of fifteen exceptional speeches and the people who delivered them—and Ben Rhodes carries it off beautifully in this generous, trenchant, urgently needed book.”—Fredrik Logevall, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam

“All We Say reminds us that our self-definition did not end with the surge of political language those men who authored the Constitution in 1787 in Philadelphia wrote. Instead, throughout American history, we have continued to use words to try to discern what it means to live righteously in this land. How fortunate we are then to have this assembly of speeches and this uncommonly wise understanding of our past. It is a book that asks us to remember that oration is always a form of moral suasion, a contest of ideas. Here Rhodes, an authority on speechwriting and having courage, demands that we not become petrified by the immensity of what is at stake in this country we call home.”—Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Pulitzer Prize–winning essayist