Whether it’s via their tone, topic, or tenor, certain works just say “America.” Here are three such titles, suggested by David Bruce Smith, founder of the Grateful American™ Foundation, in partnership with the Washington Independent Review of Books.

• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. The seminal tale of an American ambulance driver and English nurse finding love in Italy amid the carnage of World War I.
• The Chosen by Chaim Potok. Two Jewish boys — one Hasidic, the other Orthodox — form an unlikely and enduring friendship in post-WWII Brooklyn.
• Native Son by Richard Wright. Poverty and race collide in 1930s Chicago in this searing story of Bigger Thomas, a young black man who commits an unthinkable act.