Declare Based On Books The Americans, Vol. 3: The Democratic Experience (The Americans #3)
| Title | : | The Americans, Vol. 3: The Democratic Experience (The Americans #3) |
| Author | : | Daniel J. Boorstin |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 717 pages |
| Published | : | July 12th 1974 by Vintage (first published January 1973) |
| Categories | : | History. North American Hi.... American History. Nonfiction. Politics |
Daniel J. Boorstin
Paperback | Pages: 717 pages Rating: 4.08 | 718 Users | 20 Reviews
Chronicle Supposing Books The Americans, Vol. 3: The Democratic Experience (The Americans #3)
There are plenty of simple errors in this book, of date and place, and plenty of vacuous speculation, but overall, this book gives the reader a majestic overview of Americans inventing and creating over a hundred years of history. The themes that tie the book together are thin, but the brief individual biographies of creativity are great. There's the abolitionist "father of life insurance" Elizur Wright, who saw desperate people trading their life insurance policies as a shadow of the slave trade, and who created the first life insurance regulations. There's Willis H. Carrier, a mechanical engineer who created air conditioning to assure consistent color printing in a Brooklyn print shop, and formed a "Rational Psychrometric Formulae" for proper levels of cooling. There's Chester F. Carlson, an employee of Bell Laboratories who in 1938 charged a zinc and sulfur plate and thus created "xerography" (xeros was Greek for dry, or dry printing), but then was ignored until the Haloid Corporation found him in 1946 and started xerox machines.Boorstin highlights quotidian geniuses such as Luther Childs Crowell (who invented the square-bottomed paper bag), Walter Shewhart (industrial quality control), or Robert Gair (folded cardboard), and myriad other inventors of the mundane necessities of modern life. Yet he also discusses philosophers like John Dewey, advocates for schooling like Jonathan Baldwin Turner, and creative organizations like the Wyoming Stock Growers Association or the American Association of Painters and Sculptors (which put on the Armory Show in 1913)
The overall theme of the book, such as it is, is that American inventiveness democratized and homogenized American life, usually for the better, but not always. The book contains a hint of wistfulness about lost community and lost authenticity, but overall it is in awe of the transformations these creative people wrought. While the endless stories and biographies about inventiveness can become tedious, they are a worthwhile look at some of the things that probably matter most in history.
Identify Books As The Americans, Vol. 3: The Democratic Experience (The Americans #3)
| Original Title: | The Americans, Vol 3: The Democratic Experience |
| ISBN: | 0394710118 (ISBN13: 9780394710112) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | The Americans #3 |
| Literary Awards: | Pulitzer Prize for History (1974), National Book Award Finalist for History (1974) |
Rating Based On Books The Americans, Vol. 3: The Democratic Experience (The Americans #3)
Ratings: 4.08 From 718 Users | 20 ReviewsWrite Up Based On Books The Americans, Vol. 3: The Democratic Experience (The Americans #3)
This is a re-read. This whole series is really eye-opening. It was written a while back, and I've read criticism that its view of history is far too centered on dead white males (which if I do a count of people mentioned is true). But still I think the way Boorstin categorizes and investigates the forces of what made the US what it is, holds truth.More a collection of runnning observations and short essays, but all of it interesting and illuminating. Interestingly, the chapters on the 20th century's evolution of mass communications brought some of the same hopes and fears -- by contemporaries and the author -- that we've seen with the internet, social and smartphones.
By nature episodic, the book is still engaging and thought provoking. The focus is on inventions and attitudes that that really emphasized the values of the New compared to the Old world. Stimulating and insightful; not to be missed.
Listened to via Books-on-TapeDaniel Boorstin is the most oft cited consensus historian of the post-war period. As critics observe, he is persistently oblivious to conflict and contest in American history. Worse than being reviled, he is ignored by the profession as irrelevant.Main current of Boorstin's thought is that Americans are a "practical" people. Free from abstract doctrine or theological speculation, the Puritans built a "city on a hill." Celia Kenyon pointed to "the themes of
Reading this book in the past week, I have learned more miscellaneous facts about American history than I have in the past four years! And it was also fascinating and thought-provoking about the development of our American culture.
Sometimes I really loved this book (particularly because I'm a data person and he spends a lot of time talking about Statistical communities, i.e. the development of IQ tests to measure intelligence, GDP to measure economies, etc), but it bothered me that he didn't stick to the theme of "the democratic experience". He was all over the place and would just throw in the word "democratic" every now and then. Not Boorstin's best work, in my opinion.
Highly readable mostly non-political history of US. Full of surprising explanations of how and why business and social customs came about.
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