Hidden History : Exploring Our Secret Past

Rating:
Summary: Out of print..no,no, no. Say it isn't so. Bring it back.
Review: Daniel Boorstin is one of the men I'd like to invite to dinner along with Justice Renquist and Thomas Jefferson. He's a historian par excellence. In HIDDEN HISTORY he publishes a series of essays that explore the more unfamiliar aspects of familiar events.

HIDDEN HISTORY helps us to see our forefathers in unexpected roles and learn to see our society from new perspectives.

"...the prize for which Europeans would have to shed blood would seem the free native birthright of Americans," he writes. "The history of the United States has thus had a unity and coherence unknown in Europe. Many factors -- our geographical isolation, our special opportunities for expansion and exploitation within our own borders and our remoteness from Europe have, of course, contributed...but, whatever the causes, the winds of dogma and the gusts of revolution which during the last two centuries have blown violently over Western Europe...have not ruffled our intellectual climate."

Boorstin says that the American Revolution was hardly a revolution at all, at least not in the sense of the modern European understanding of evolution. He quotes Alexis de Tocqueville, "the social condition and the Constitution of the Americans are democratic, but they have not had a democratic revolution." Boorstin says this fact "is surely one of the most important of our history."

Boorstin's theories, his arguments, the pictures he presents of events and people who shaped our nation's history -- all jolt the reader's awareness and awaken to higher interest and sensibilities. They fan the flicker of patriotism that hides in complacency.

HIDDEN HISTORY is scholarly but it is far from dull. It challenges our perceptions of our own history and our role in the world; it whets the appetite for understanding. It should NEVER go out of print.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent fresh ideas, needed better notes, sources.
Review: This book is a wonderful collection of essays that give a fresh perspective on some well known historical events. Although you might think you know the history, Boorstin is like Paul Harvey, he tells you "the rest of the story". I would have liked to know his sources and other works about his topics so I could learn more.