"We call it the United States. And we're bound together by our Constitution and our language. Yet, in many ways, we're a group of separate kingdoms. Our land grows palm trees and pine, redwoods and beach plum, vanishing Key deer and whooping cranes. Our people say 'you all' and 'youse'; catch shrimp and sell stocks; live in lean-tos, skyscrapers and stucco bungalows. There's never been such a fiercely diverse land."
So say the editors of TIME-LIFE Books in introducing a new series devoted to summarizing and displaying this diversity. The opening volume in the TIME-LIFE Library of America, out this week, is...