This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. To mark the occasion of America’s centennial, the people of Taunton, Massachusetts, invited James Russell Lowell—distinguished poet, founding editor of The Atlantic—to compose and read an ode for the Fourth of July. Lowell didn’t much like what he produced.