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The Americans #3
The Americans, Vol. 3: The Democratic Experience
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. A study of the last 100 years of American history.
717 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
About the author
Daniel J. Boorstin
154 books351 followersDaniel Joseph Boorstin was a historian, professor, attorney, and writer. He was appointed twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress from 1975 until 1987.
He graduated from Tulsa's Central High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the age of 15. He graduated with highest honors from Harvard, studied at Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned his PhD at Yale University. He was a lawyer and a university professor at the University of Chicago for 25 years. He also served as director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution.
His The Americans The Democratic Experience received the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in history.
Within the discipline of social theory, Boorstin’s 1961 book The Image A Guide to Pseudo-events in America is an early description of aspects of American life that were later termed hyperreality and postmodernity. In The Image, Boorstin describes shifts in American culture—mainly due to advertising—where the reproduction or simulation of an event becomes more important or "real" than the event itself. He goes on to coin the term pseudo-event which describes events or activities that serve little to no purpose other than to be reproduced through advertisements or other forms of publicity. The idea of pseudo-events closely mirrors work later done by Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord. The work is still often used as a text in American sociology courses.
When President Gerald Ford nominated Boorstin to be Librarian of Congress, the nomination was supported by the Authors League of America but opposed by the American Library Association because Boorstin "was not a library administrator." The Senate confirmed the nomination without debate.
Boorstin died in 2004 in Washington, D.C.
He graduated from Tulsa's Central High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the age of 15. He graduated with highest honors from Harvard, studied at Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned his PhD at Yale University. He was a lawyer and a university professor at the University of Chicago for 25 years. He also served as director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution.
His The Americans The Democratic Experience received the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in history.
Within the discipline of social theory, Boorstin’s 1961 book The Image A Guide to Pseudo-events in America is an early description of aspects of American life that were later termed hyperreality and postmodernity. In The Image, Boorstin describes shifts in American culture—mainly due to advertising—where the reproduction or simulation of an event becomes more important or "real" than the event itself. He goes on to coin the term pseudo-event which describes events or activities that serve little to no purpose other than to be reproduced through advertisements or other forms of publicity. The idea of pseudo-events closely mirrors work later done by Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord. The work is still often used as a text in American sociology courses.
When President Gerald Ford nominated Boorstin to be Librarian of Congress, the nomination was supported by the Authors League of America but opposed by the American Library Association because Boorstin "was not a library administrator." The Senate confirmed the nomination without debate.
Boorstin died in 2004 in Washington, D.C.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
January 15, 2018
Listened to via Books-on-Tape
Daniel 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 practicality, of realistic adaptation to the circumstances of colonial life, of intelligent and effective amateurism" in his work. As others have pointed out, he was one of the first people to point out the importance of technological innovation throughout American history. In the woods of New England, people did need to be jacks of all trades to survive. This is, as Brooke Hindle and Steven Lubar were to point out later, a source of innovation in America's wooden age. Another problem with Boorstin's approach is the insistence on the irrelevance of ideology to the American experience. The Quakers were the only ideologues in his history. They, like the Civil Rights workers, went to prisons singing. The Quakers are as wrong-headed in Boorstin's views as those who protested for civil rights.
In a review entitled "American Social History: The Boorstin Experience," Kenneth L. Kusmer covers all three volumes and concludes that Boorstin is best when talking about times when conflict was less important than consensus. Unfortunately, there is no time in American History when conflict was less important than consensus. Kusmer points out that the American Revolution flows from his pen as a decidedly un-revolutionary event. On the Puritans he stresses the lack of rancorous contention. The Puritans had the right to get rid of dissenters (Williams and Hutchinson). Religion was the site of social stability not the realm of contested values. When turning his eye to the military history of America, Kusmer tells us that Boorstin is more valuable. He stresses the unschooled and "pragmatic" approach which American commanders took during the Revolution. Unrestrained by the weight of the "old world," they adopted guerilla tactics that enabled them to fight more effectively. (Yet what do we make of the Prussian drill master who trained Washington's troops?) Also points usefully to the American way of war as a defense of the home land, partially explaining the difficulty with LBJ faced in fighting the Vietnam war.
On the Civil War, he contrasts Northern practicality with Southern ideology. As Eric Foner has shown, Free Soil ideology was as much a motivating force in the North as white supremacy was in the South. He ignores blacks, indians and women as makers of history at all turns. His work is solidly "middle class," what one would call Whiggish, in the first two volumes and turns a bit pessimistic in the third. The rise of the New Left and anti-Vietnam protest disillusioned him it seems. In the third volume he was less celebratory. The imperative of technology seemed to be pushing us forward, making life more second hand ... the immediacy of experience was fading, and so too was the practical amateurism that forswears the ideological.
Daniel 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 practicality, of realistic adaptation to the circumstances of colonial life, of intelligent and effective amateurism" in his work. As others have pointed out, he was one of the first people to point out the importance of technological innovation throughout American history. In the woods of New England, people did need to be jacks of all trades to survive. This is, as Brooke Hindle and Steven Lubar were to point out later, a source of innovation in America's wooden age. Another problem with Boorstin's approach is the insistence on the irrelevance of ideology to the American experience. The Quakers were the only ideologues in his history. They, like the Civil Rights workers, went to prisons singing. The Quakers are as wrong-headed in Boorstin's views as those who protested for civil rights.
In a review entitled "American Social History: The Boorstin Experience," Kenneth L. Kusmer covers all three volumes and concludes that Boorstin is best when talking about times when conflict was less important than consensus. Unfortunately, there is no time in American History when conflict was less important than consensus. Kusmer points out that the American Revolution flows from his pen as a decidedly un-revolutionary event. On the Puritans he stresses the lack of rancorous contention. The Puritans had the right to get rid of dissenters (Williams and Hutchinson). Religion was the site of social stability not the realm of contested values. When turning his eye to the military history of America, Kusmer tells us that Boorstin is more valuable. He stresses the unschooled and "pragmatic" approach which American commanders took during the Revolution. Unrestrained by the weight of the "old world," they adopted guerilla tactics that enabled them to fight more effectively. (Yet what do we make of the Prussian drill master who trained Washington's troops?) Also points usefully to the American way of war as a defense of the home land, partially explaining the difficulty with LBJ faced in fighting the Vietnam war.
On the Civil War, he contrasts Northern practicality with Southern ideology. As Eric Foner has shown, Free Soil ideology was as much a motivating force in the North as white supremacy was in the South. He ignores blacks, indians and women as makers of history at all turns. His work is solidly "middle class," what one would call Whiggish, in the first two volumes and turns a bit pessimistic in the third. The rise of the New Left and anti-Vietnam protest disillusioned him it seems. In the third volume he was less celebratory. The imperative of technology seemed to be pushing us forward, making life more second hand ... the immediacy of experience was fading, and so too was the practical amateurism that forswears the ideological.
December 17, 2014
If I had to pick one author to pick for my 'desert island' library it would be my history-hero - Daniel J. Boorstin who was literally the Librarian of Congress. I cannot remember when I first read this book - high school, college - maybe even just after college, but this book drove in me the desire to be master of 'why things happened the way they did'.
To summarize the book, from the overleaf: "Daniel J. Boorstin's long-awaited full-scale portrait of modern America chronicles the Great Transformation that has come about in our daily lives since the Civil War. It recaptures the drama and the meaning of the countless and sometimes little-noticed revolutions which occurred, not in legislatures or on battlefields but in our homes and farms and factories and schools and stores - making something suprising and unprecedented of our everyday experience."
A review of the chapters gives the reader a preview of the delight to expect: "A Democracy of Clothing", "Goods Sell Themselves", "The Incorruptible Cashier", "Antidotes for the City: Utopia, Renewal, Suburbia", "Time Becomes Fungible: Packaging the Unit of Work".
If you are a trivia nut, and a lover of the little-known - this is the Bible.
Every American should be required to read any of Boorstin's great books.
To summarize the book, from the overleaf: "Daniel J. Boorstin's long-awaited full-scale portrait of modern America chronicles the Great Transformation that has come about in our daily lives since the Civil War. It recaptures the drama and the meaning of the countless and sometimes little-noticed revolutions which occurred, not in legislatures or on battlefields but in our homes and farms and factories and schools and stores - making something suprising and unprecedented of our everyday experience."
A review of the chapters gives the reader a preview of the delight to expect: "A Democracy of Clothing", "Goods Sell Themselves", "The Incorruptible Cashier", "Antidotes for the City: Utopia, Renewal, Suburbia", "Time Becomes Fungible: Packaging the Unit of Work".
If you are a trivia nut, and a lover of the little-known - this is the Bible.
Every American should be required to read any of Boorstin's great books.
December 29, 2023
3.5 Stars
I found this 3rd volume of Boorstin’s trilogy to be the most interesting. His subtitle is “the DEMOCRATIC experience “, which refers not to politics but to ‘communal experiences’ or the ‘democratization’ of things.
The book is chock full of vignettes about people and cultural themes from approximately 1850-1960. Loosely tied to his previous 2 volumes, Boorstin makes observations about changes in America during this time period and the people who generated those changes. A very small sample includes:
Clarence BIRDSEYE (quick frozen food), Gustavus Franklin SWIFT ( shipping dressed beef), Gail BORDEN (condensed milk), Stephen Dudley FIELD (streetcar pioneer), James RITTY & John Henry PATTERSON ( cash registers-NCR), Elizur WRIGHT (father of life insurance actuary tables, Henry HYDE(Equitable Life Assurance), R. H. MACY (department store), Aaron Montgomery WARD & Richard Warren SEARS (mail order retail), George PULLMAN (luxury train cars), Willis CARRIER (air conditioning), Joseph PULITZER (newspaper sensationalism), and on and on for 600 paperback pages.
Each entrepreneur in his own way widened ‘communities’ of consumption, a democratizing process. And these are just a handful of the dozens described by Boorstin. This book really needs several readings to fully appreciate its contents.
The breadth of Boorstin’s book is simply staggering. It seems as if every feasible innovation and endeavor is mentioned, from cattle ranching to glass manufacturing, from adding machines to refrigeration., from the steamboat to the space rocket, from the artist to the scientist.
If there is a negative, it might be the book’s length. 100 or so fewer pages would help avoid the occasional tedium I experienced.
I found this 3rd volume of Boorstin’s trilogy to be the most interesting. His subtitle is “the DEMOCRATIC experience “, which refers not to politics but to ‘communal experiences’ or the ‘democratization’ of things.
The book is chock full of vignettes about people and cultural themes from approximately 1850-1960. Loosely tied to his previous 2 volumes, Boorstin makes observations about changes in America during this time period and the people who generated those changes. A very small sample includes:
Clarence BIRDSEYE (quick frozen food), Gustavus Franklin SWIFT ( shipping dressed beef), Gail BORDEN (condensed milk), Stephen Dudley FIELD (streetcar pioneer), James RITTY & John Henry PATTERSON ( cash registers-NCR), Elizur WRIGHT (father of life insurance actuary tables, Henry HYDE(Equitable Life Assurance), R. H. MACY (department store), Aaron Montgomery WARD & Richard Warren SEARS (mail order retail), George PULLMAN (luxury train cars), Willis CARRIER (air conditioning), Joseph PULITZER (newspaper sensationalism), and on and on for 600 paperback pages.
Each entrepreneur in his own way widened ‘communities’ of consumption, a democratizing process. And these are just a handful of the dozens described by Boorstin. This book really needs several readings to fully appreciate its contents.
The breadth of Boorstin’s book is simply staggering. It seems as if every feasible innovation and endeavor is mentioned, from cattle ranching to glass manufacturing, from adding machines to refrigeration., from the steamboat to the space rocket, from the artist to the scientist.
If there is a negative, it might be the book’s length. 100 or so fewer pages would help avoid the occasional tedium I experienced.
November 8, 2017
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.
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.
March 5, 2008
A little hard to stick with, but a wonderful book. It's full of interesting stories and information, and shows a great picture of time passing and a country evolving.
November 13, 2008
Read the entire trilogy. Cultural history at its best.
November 8, 2021
I thought it was time to reread this book given our current issues in our country.
I think the research is well done. However at times I found errors with dates. So that some what bugs me in a book like this.
With that said...
This is like reading a history book, but not your typical history book. It's a history of America made by individuals. Not a country born of kings or dictators. So much history covered that you never hear about in school. It covers the stories of ambitious Americans from the 1880s on who's inventions are part of our everyday lives now. From automobiles, packaging, the atom bomb!
Boorstin's other books in this series were easier to read. This one did drag on a bit for me in parts. But, all in all I wish all kids would read this book along with adults. It seems we are missing basic history lessons in our life right now.
I think the research is well done. However at times I found errors with dates. So that some what bugs me in a book like this.
With that said...
This is like reading a history book, but not your typical history book. It's a history of America made by individuals. Not a country born of kings or dictators. So much history covered that you never hear about in school. It covers the stories of ambitious Americans from the 1880s on who's inventions are part of our everyday lives now. From automobiles, packaging, the atom bomb!
Boorstin's other books in this series were easier to read. This one did drag on a bit for me in parts. But, all in all I wish all kids would read this book along with adults. It seems we are missing basic history lessons in our life right now.
August 19, 2018
Boorstin calls Christmas America's "national Festival of Consumption". My sentiments exactly. The entire book is well-written and interesting though tedious at times, but the last chapter is outstanding. Boorstin compares the American enterprises of splitting the atom with the space program. He shows amazing insight, especially considering he wrote it so soon after the moon landing. I couldn't stop reading the last chapter. Loved it!
August 13, 2018
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.
July 27, 2023
Informative, encyclopedic, and mostly interesting compendium of threads of American culture/experience/innovation/etc. from roughly 1870-1970. Gets a little "old man yells at cloud" in some of its editorializing (about what's been lost with the rise of mass media, etc.), and this is not the book to read regarding race relations/barriers in this era, but for what it is, it's better than good.
May 26, 2022
I did not think that this was as engaging as the other volumes in the series. I think perhaps because life changed so much more in the ~100 years covered (~Civil War to first Moon landing) that it seemed a little too broad.
July 2, 2018
Very informative, as all of his books are, but the style is definitely showing its age.
March 26, 2017
Splendid!
August 14, 2016
Like many of Boorstin's other books this one does not follow a central narrative. Rather it consists of a series of seemingly random vignettes like the development of cattle branding irons, Chicago gangsters, and marriage laws in Nevada. While odd, the anecdotes are nonetheless fascinating and they're all held together by a common theme. For example the previously mentioned anecdotes fall under a section named "The Go-Getters" which is about America as a "developing" country. There weren't yet established laws and customs with regard to the use of Western lands, immigrant groups hadn't yet assimilated, and small Western states like Nevada hadn't found a role in the larger nation and economy. The section tells the story of how different groups responded to the challenges and opportunities that emerged from these ambiguities in law and culture. Likewise "Statistical Communities" covers the development of life expectancy statistics, poverty rates, standardized clothing sizes, I.Q. tests, etc. It tells the story of how statistics penetrated the lives of ordinary people in ways they never had before. Those who want a "standard" history should probably look elsewhere, but it's a good read for anyone interested in quirky, offbeat subjects that other historians generally ignore.
August 30, 2010
Another re-read of one of my key undergraduate texts. The book is an example of intellectual history - as opposed to social history of political history. As such, it is a treasure store of information on those aspects of American colonial life that are often given little attention elsewhere - the development of American schools and universities, the practice of law and medicine in the colonies, the history of books and newspapers before the revolution, as well as a host of other areas of interest.
A personal favourite is the author’s analysis of the development of the English language and dialect in the colonies.
The author dislikes the Quakers, praises the Virginians and, unusually, downplays the role of European enlightenment ideas on the politics of the Revolution. Compelling reading.
A personal favourite is the author’s analysis of the development of the English language and dialect in the colonies.
The author dislikes the Quakers, praises the Virginians and, unusually, downplays the role of European enlightenment ideas on the politics of the Revolution. Compelling reading.
March 16, 2016
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.
January 14, 2012
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.
Read
April 13, 2010Reading 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.
May 5, 2013
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.
August 13, 2013
Another wonderful installment of the three-volume history of the U.S. I've learned so much from these books, and, although this last one was written in the late 1960s, it is still very relevant. Highly recommended.
December 28, 2007
In my top 10 history.
February 9, 2011
This is a beautifully written in-depth look at how the cultural idea of democratization has affected our society from politics to commerce.
Read
December 19, 2016Highly readable mostly non-political history of US. Full of surprising explanations of how and why business and social customs came about.
June 30, 2009
this is the book that inspired me to be an American Studies student.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews