<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting things you probably just took for granted
Review: Aside from the fact that Daniel Boorstin writes with real grace, which makes this final volume in his trilogy about American life a pleasure to read, it is filled with a consideration of subjects that you most likely never thought about as being part of "American history"--at least as it's taught in school--yet these are the events and the people who made the world we actually LIVE in: the businessmen and idea people who created the mail-order catalogue, the department store, the oil industry, and even the divorce industry, which played a surprising commercial role in the American west. Boorstin tells about people whose names have become household words (like Sears & Roebuck, or Dunn & Bradstreet)and how their ideas helped build the country and the life we know today; he tells about the cattle drives and the range wars; about inventions, and business, and how the democratization of shopping in the big department stores was a quintessentially American development. Every chapter has its fascination for the reader--at least for THIS reader. Ideas or practices that I simply accepted as "the way things are" prove often to be unique American inventions, and knowing this helps us know more about who we are, and why we are seen as different from the rest of the world (even as they start to copy us in so many ways).
Rating:
Summary: Conservative yet superb. HHmmh.
Review: In un-Zinn-like, yet still richly diverse prose Mr. Boorstin gives the fair-minded liberal battleground to do revisionist work. Another reviewer on this site reads Boorstin as "drifting to the right". True enough, but by simultaneously worrying about the extent of 'progressive' change in Democratic America and declaring the (legitimate) concern of progressives to continue to press for even more, lest such ideas retreat to a lonely theoretical corner (time out!), he seems to be opining our past as the Bennet-Brookhiser-Will team will never do: Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and all of their Western European enlightened brothers' didn't know too many of the challenges ahead. That's why Madison left a record of the spirited talks in the hallowed halls of Philly way long ago. He read centuries of history to formulate his ideas for civility and government...as Susan B., Huey Long, MLK and Noam Chomsky (HAH!) have done in later years.
Rating:
Summary: Conservative yet superb. HHmmh.
Review: In un-Zinn-like, yet still richly diverse prose Mr. Boorstin gives the fair-minded liberal battleground to do revisionist work. Another reviewer on this site reads Boorstin as "drifting to the right". True enough, but by simultaneously worrying about the extent of 'progressive' change in Democratic America and declaring the (legitimate) concern of progressives to continue to press for even more, lest such ideas retreat to a lonely theoretical corner (time out!), he seems to be opining our past as the Bennet-Brookhiser-Will team will never do: Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and all of their Western European enlightened brothers' didn't know too many of the challenges ahead. That's why Madison left a record of the spirited talks in the hallowed halls of Philly way long ago. He read centuries of history to formulate his ideas for civility and government...as Susan B., Huey Long, MLK and Noam Chomsky (HAH!) have done in later years.
Rating:
Summary: Conservative yet superb. HHmmh.
Review: In un-Zinn-like, yet still richly diverse prose Mr. Boorstin gives the fair-minded liberal battleground to do revisionist work. Another reviewer on this site reads Boorstin as "drifting to the right". True enough, but by simultaneously worrying about the extent of 'progressive' change in Democratic America and declaring the (legitimate) concern of progressives to continue to press for even more, lest such ideas retreat to a lonely theoretical corner (time out!), he seems to be opining our past as the Bennet-Brookhiser-Will team will never do: Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and all of their Western European enlightened brothers' didn't know too many of the challenges ahead. That's why Madison left a record of the spirited talks in the hallowed halls of Philly way long ago. He read centuries of history to formulate his ideas for civility and government...as Susan B., Huey Long, MLK and Noam Chomsky (HAH!) have done in later years.
Rating:
Summary: Acerbic Critic
Review: Many have described Boorstin's "The Americans" series as being right-wing. I do not concur. He writes about a period, in reality our age, as if it is still happening because it is. The third and final book in the series shows that he is unsure if the changes from the Civil War to the present day have not all been for the betterment of mankind. Although written three decades ago, I would say that this book is more relevant than ever. I think that everyone should read "The Americans" series. There is a bit more of Boorstin's curmugeony personality in this last book, but don't let that disuade you from enjoying a very complex perspective of America in the Twentieth Century and, very possibly, the Twenty-First Century.
Rating:
Summary: Acerbic Critic
Review: Many have described Boorstin's "The Americans" series as being right-wing. I do not concur. He writes about a period, in reality our age, as if it is still happening because it is. The third and final book in the series shows that he is unsure if the changes from the Civil War to the present day have not all been for the betterment of mankind. Although written three decades ago, I would say that this book is more relevant than ever. I think that everyone should read "The Americans" series. There is a bit more of Boorstin's curmugeony personality in this last book, but don't let that disuade you from enjoying a very complex perspective of America in the Twentieth Century and, very possibly, the Twenty-First Century.
Rating:
Summary: A benchmark in macro history texts.
Review: The author takes the reader to the heart of history; the people. He finds the people who may be obscure but their role in the story he tells serve to make us realize their really is an American spirit. Kudos to Boorstin and the people he portrays
Rating:
Summary: King Demos
Review: The third and final volume of Boorstin's trilogy reveals the democratizing of experience that took place in America after the Civil War and up to the present day, an "Age of Revolution" more revolutionary than America's War for Independence. I wonder how many Americans have realized, as Boorstin did, that democracy was being elevated beyond its definition, from a form of government in which people participated through voting for representatives, to a substitute religion, a sieve in which nearly every facet of modern life was filtered. In these pages: democratization of purchases, travel, work, culture, time and space until finally democratizing of the atom.Democracy was not the only word being stretched, transformed, and distorted. From these pages you could compile a dictionary of Americanisms created by an obsessive-compulsive people who coined new words to fit their new inventions, methods, and ideas. Where in volumes one and two of the trilogy local community was the glue, the third volume demonstrates the American willingness to change even the foundations which had supported them. Loyalties and allegiances were more flexible than ever. Boorstin presents us with chapters on the "Go-Getters" who created artificial communities to replace the old communities based on localism. "Everywhere communities" suggested inclusion but also uniformity and attenuation of experience. "Consumption communities" meant being united less by the Bible than by the Sears catalog. A religion of consumption was created by the dispersal of raw materials and products throughout the country via train, plane, and automobile and by the dominance of the businessman, lawyer, and salesman. "Statistical communities" reduced Americans further to numbers based on how much income they earned, how much they consumed, or how they behaved in relation to the growing mass of people. The totalizing effect of democracy was such that "Americanization" became a synonym for "democratization." The last section discusses the growth of foreign aid and the sense that the American mission meant turning other countries into democracies of cash. "Americanism" was itself an Americanism to describe the desire, if not the moral obligation, to make other countries more like us. No book has taught me as much about the United States and its people as Boorstin's trilogy. A brief look at the annotated bibliography reveals how much time and effort has been put into these books over the course of many years. Equally remarkable is Boorstin's ability to convey this mass of material in an entertaining, objective manner. Few books have conveyed the same tragic sense of history. Every page is filled with continuities, ambiguities, and reverberations that show that history is double-edged, simultaneously full of remarkable achievements and unintended consequences.
Rating:
Summary: A key idea about American civilization
Review: There is one idea of Boorstin that seems to me to explain a tremendous amount about American civilization. He claims that it is by small improvements in life, by the power of invention which made life better bit by bit American civilization moved ahead. Emerson's ' better mousetrap which all beat their way to the inventor's door to get'is Boorstin's key to American greatness.
This work is filled with tremendous insight and knowledge into American reality.
Rating: 
Summary: Mostly fascinating
Review: This is mostly a collection of mini-histories of the various American businesses and inventions that arose after the Civil War, which are often hugely fascinating on a purely factual level. Boorstin's big argument is that American life became more and more unmoored to local places and common bodies of knowledge, resulting in a disorienting and dispiriting world of mass marketing and suburbs, with gadgets that worked in ways no one can understand. There is a right-wing drift to his ideas, but the sureness of his opinions is nice to hear even if you don't agree.
<< 1 >>
|
