"Yet here is the fascinating thing: Writers on America is, without question, 'propaganda' -- and so it is banned in America. It is selected information; literature collected with the deliberate end of propagating a clear political argument -- that life in America is best and most free. But what prevents Writers on America from amounting to little more than a worthless pamphlet, easy to dismiss, is that unsettling, subversive quality that writers have."

Writers on America is available online, and includes optimistic meditations from Richard Ford, Michael Chabon, and Billy Collins, among others.