This vast collection of speeches I like to refer to as "Penguin America's American Book of American Speeches... America". The editor suffers from what can only be described as socio-centricism. Most of the speeches are American, British (particularly of the 19th century), French (Enlightenment thinkers), and Classical/Biblical. This strikes me as a sort of mythic American past building where Biblical and Classical history through English history lead inevitably to America today. Thus one may find little of the world outside of the United States here, except where it concerns the United States or is well known among it's people.