After the Civil War many artists, inc. Homer, Church and Moran, created images of America's scenic wonders and landscape icons, which, along with ars objects, literature, photos and other ephemera, helped make the landscape a source of national pride. Hotel owners, railroads, advertisers and landscape developers also used art objects and mass-produced images to promote tourism. This established the US landscape as the source of national character traits like innocence, independence, ingenuity and pragmatism, forging a unique American identity. The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum will showcase, for the first time in more than 20 years, their collection of more than 2000 paintings and drawings inc. the largest number of Homer and Church objects in the world. 5 essays accompany more than 200 illustrations, showing how these artists' depictions of America helped create a notion of America as a land of purity and beauty, harmony and opportunity. Recent events at home and abroad have shown that the identity of the US as a nation is especially relevant today and this book sheds new light on the genesis and evolution of the national character through iconic imagery.