Spirit of 76 Renewed: A History of the United States

The American Journey--stories & music about patriots & leaders who have influenced the direction of America from its founding to the 21st century

The Spirit of '76–Renewed e-book, written by Richard (Dick) L. Gustafson, is an abridged history of the founding of the United States of America from its colonization to its recent past. This journey of American politics touches on many milestones including The Revolution, Declaration of Independence, founding of the U.S. Constitution, and the stories and music of our patriots and presidents who have influenced the direction of America through the decades. The ongoing mission behind the development of this multimedia based presentation has been to re-introduce students, teachers and patriots alike to our founding fathers and protectors of America.

The Spirit of '76 includes insight into the personalities, beliefs, inspirations, actions, motives and important events behind our country's patriots. The presentation includes many U.S. history highlights with numerous supporting Internet links to explore the details behind the people and events that has guided our nation.

The story has been continually evolving since its conception. From the start it was the author's vision to present the story in the narrative. In 2008 Dick completed this narrative with period music as an audio CD presentation. But, with discs becoming less prominent as a presentation medium, the story as a physical medium was shelved. Instead Dick spent time finding photos and supporting Internet links to transform his story into an interactive multimedia experience. Today, the presentation is offered as an e-book in EPUB, MOBI, and iBook formats.

Because the Internet is always changing, broken or dead links occur over time. The Internet links in this e-book are dynamically updated from the spiritof76renewed.org website. The web links are constructed in this way so that readers will always have references that are reliable and up-to-date.

But the story's journey is not entirely finished. In the near future, Dick plans to release an enhanced version of the e-book presentation in the Apple iBook format. This enhanced version will offer everything that is in the current version of the e-book but adds the spoken word with patriotic music as the instrumental background. In this edition a few of the 76 music performance vignettes are read as poetry. Often lyrics are learned by rote, overlooking their significance, resulting in the loss of their true meaning.

Dick's goal is to inspire and inform Americans of all ages about the importance of the American miracle and to build a new sense of pride and patriotism for our country. He hopes to continue his mission to fill all readers with a renewed spirit of '76.