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Title: The Americans: The Democratic Experience by DANIEL J. BOORSTIN ISBN: 0-394-71011-8 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 July, 1974 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.83 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: King Demos
Comment: 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: 5
Summary: Acerbic Critic
Comment: 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: 5
Summary: Conservative yet superb. HHmmh.
Comment: 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.
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Title: The Americans: The National Experience by DANIEL J. BOORSTIN ISBN: 0394703588 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 February, 1967 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Americans: The Colonial Experience by Daniel J. Boorstin ISBN: 0394705130 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 March, 1964 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Seekers : The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World by Daniel J. Boorstin ISBN: 0375704752 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 26 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin ISBN: 0394726251 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 February, 1985 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Hidden History : Exploring Our Secret Past by Daniel J. Boorstin ISBN: 0679722238 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 14 May, 1989 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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