Happy 250th to a Battered But Beautiful America

Perhaps the most evocative tune in America’s patriotic repertoire, and certainly the most popular, is also among the least understood. Written by Katharine Lee Bates in 1893, “America the Beautiful” will be sung out at countless parades and picnics and parties on the country’s 250th anniversary this July Fourth. Amid divisive times in national life, it offers a hopeful and fitting rejoinder.