This book would have been impossible without the incomparable collections of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
It is a pleasure to thank friends and fellow scholars who have given me suggestions or read parts of the manuscript. They have saved me from errors of fact, but often have not shared my interpretations or my emphases. They include: Dr. James S. Ackerman, Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus, Harvard University; Mr. Yoshinobu Ashihara, architect, Tokyo, Japan; Dr. Jacques Barzun, University Professor Emeritus, Columbia University; Dr. Kenneth Brecher, Professor of Astronomy and Physics, Boston University; Dr. Alan Fern, Director, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Dr. Gerald Holton, Mallinkrodt Professor of Physics and Professor of History of Science, Harvard University; Mr. Eugene Istomin, concert pianist, Washington, D.C.; Mrs. Marta Istomin, former Artistic Director, Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.; Mr. David Jackson, architect, Sydney, Australia, Dr. Joseph Kerman, Professor of Music, University of California, Berkeley; Dr. Bernard Knox, Director Emeritus, Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, D.C.; Dr. Angeliki Laiou, Professor of Byzantine History, Harvard University; Director, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections, Washington, D.C.; Dr. R.W.B. Lewis, Professor Emeritus of American Studies and English, Yale University; Dr. Kenneth Lynn, Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor of History Emeritus, The Johns Hopkins University; Dr. William H. McNeill, Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor of History Emeritus, University of Chicago; Dr. Henry A. Millon, Dean, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Dr. F. W. Mote, Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, Princeton University; Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University; Dr. Phillips Talbot, President Emeritus, The Asia Society, New York, N.Y.; Dr. Paul Walker, Chicago, Illinois; Mr. George M. White, The Architect of the Capitol, Washington, D.C.; Dr. Esmond Wright, former Director of the Institute of United States Studies and Professor Emeritus of American History, University of London; and my sons, Paul Boorstin, Jonathan Boorstin, and David Boorstin.
My friend Genevieve Gremillion has helped at every stage in the preparation of the manuscript. Once again, her devotion to the project, her patience, and her good cheer have lightened the task of preparing and revising these many pages. Mrs. Mae Barnes has given prompt and valuable assistance in the final stages. Mrs. Sono Rosenberg has given the copy editing of this book the benefit of her exceptional knowledge and expertise.
Robert D. Loomis, vice president and executive editor of Random House, once again has shown me how a publishing editor at his best can guide and encourage an author. Most important has been his feeling for what this book should (and should not) try to be. By his close editing of what I have included and his rigorous insistence on what I should omit, he has helped me give focus and direction to the book.
Ruth F. Boorstin, my wife, has been as always my principal and most penetrating editor. Her poetic feeling for words and her impatience with vagueness and the cliché have made the book briefer, clearer, and more readable than it otherwise would have been. To dedicate this book to her is, once again, a conspicuous understatement, which is only one of the literary virtues she has tried to teach me.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Georges Borchardt, Inc.: Excerpts from Prometheus, The Life of Balzac by André Maurois, published by Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 1965 by Librairie Hachette. Translation copyright © 1965 by The Bodley Head Ltd. Reprinted by permission.
Dover Publications, Inc.: Excerpts from Painting in Islam by Thomas W. Arnold. Reprinted by permission.
Faber & Faber Ltd: Excerpts from Stravinsky by Eric Walter White. Copyright 1948. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.
Kathleen W. Frame: Excerpt from Montaigne, A Biography by Donald M. Frame. Copyright © 1965 by Donald M. Frame. Reprinted by permission of Kathleen W. Frame.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber & Faber Ltd.: Excerpts from “The Waste Land,” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and “The Hollow Men” from Collected Poems, 1909–1962 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1936 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and copyright © 1964, 1963 by T. S. Eliot. Excerpts from The Family Reunion by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1939 by T. S. Eliot and copyright renewed 1967 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Rights throughout the world excluding the United States are controlled by Faber & Faber Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber & Faber Ltd.
The Johns Hopkins University Press: Excerpts from Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days. Shield., translated by Apostolos N. Athanassakis, published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, London, in 1983. Reprinted by permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Macmillan London: Excerpts from The Wonder That Was India by A. L. Basham. Copyright © Sidgwick and Jackson. Reprinted by permission.
New Directions Publishing Corporation and Faber & Faber Ltd: Excerpt from “E P Ode pour l’Election de Son Sepulchre” published in Collected Shorter Poems by Ezra Pound in Great Britain and in The Cantos of Ezra Pound by Ezra Pound in the United States. Excerpt from “Cantos” from The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Copyright 1948 by Ezra Pound. Rights throughout the world excluding the United States and Canada are controlled by Faber & Faber Ltd. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation and Faber & Faber Ltd.
Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.: Excerpts from Franz Kafka: Pictures of a Life by Klaus Wagenbach. Copyright © 1984 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Penguin Books Ltd: Excerpts from The Confessions by Rousseau, translated by J. M. Cohen (Penguin Classics, 1954). Copyright 1954 by J. M. Cohen; excerpts from Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais, translated by J. M. Cohen (Penguin Classics, 1955). Translation copyright © 1955 by J. M.
Cohen; excerpts from Essays by Michel Montaigne, translated by J. M. Cohen (Penguin Classics, 1958). Copyright © 1958 by J. M. Cohen; excerpts from The Odes of Pindar, translated by C. M. Bowra (Penguin Classics, 1969). Copyright © 1969 by The Estate of C. M. Bowra. All material reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
Penguin USA: Excerpts from The Portable Cervantes by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, translated by Samuel Putnam. Translation copyright 1949, 1950, 1951 by Viking Penguin, Inc. Excerpts from The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, translated by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella. Translation copyright © 1982 by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella. Introduction by Thomas Bergin. Copyright © 1982 by The New American Library, Inc. All material reprinted by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.
Random House, Inc.: Excerpts from The Complete Greek Drama by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O’Neill, Jr. Copyright 1938 and copyright renewed 1966 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.
Random House, Inc. and Random House, UK: Excerpts from Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Translation copyright © 1981 by Random House, Inc. Rights throughout the world excluding the United States and Canada are controlled by Random House UK. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. and Random House, UK.
Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc.: Excerpts from The Diaries of Franz Kafka, translated by Martin Greenberg, edited by Max Brod. Copyright 1949 and renewed 1977 by Schocken Books. Reprinted by permission of Schocken Books, published by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Schocken Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., and Martin Seeker & Warburg Ltd: Excerpts from “The Burrow” from The Great Wall of China by Franz Kafka, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. Copyright 1946 and renewed 1974 by Schocken Books. Excerpts from “Josephine and Singer” from The Metamorphosis, The Penal Colony and Other Stories by Franz Kafka, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. Copyright 1948 and renewed 1975 by Schocken Books, Inc. Rights throughout the British Commonwealth are c
ontrolled by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Schocken Books, published by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. and Martin Seeker & Warburg Ltd.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Historian, public servant, and author, DANIEL J. BOORSTIN, who was Librarian of Congress Emeritus, directed the Library from 1975 to 1987 He had previously been director of the National Museum of History and Technology, and senior historian of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D C. Before that he was the Preston and Sterling Morton Distinguished Service Professor of History at the University of Chicago, where he taught for twenty-five years.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Boorstin graduated with highest honors from Harvard College and received his doctorate from Yale University. As a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, England, he won a coveted double first in two degrees in law and was admitted as a barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple, London. He was also a member of the Massachusetts bar He has been visiting professor at the University of Rome, the University of Geneva, the University of Kyoto in Japan, and the University of Puerto Rico In Paris he was the first incumbent of a chair in American history at the Sorbonne, and at Cambridge University, England, he was Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions and Fellow of Trinity College. Boorstin lectured widely in the United States and all over the world. He received numerous honorary degrees and was decorated by the governments of France, Belgium, Portugal, and Japan.
The Discoverers, Boorstin’s history of man’s search to know the world and himself, was published in 1983. A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection, The Discoverers was on the New York Times best-seller list for half a year and won the Watson Davis Prize of the History of Science Society. This and his other books have been translated into more than twenty languages.
Boorstin’s many books include The Americans: The Colonial Experience (1958), which won the Bancroft Prize; The Americans: The National Experience (1965), which won the Parkman Prize; and The Americans: The Democratic Experience (1973), which won the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Dexter Prize and was a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection. Among his other books are The Mysterious Science of the Law (1941), The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948), The Genius of American Politics (1953), The Image (1962), and The Republic of Technology (1978). For young people he has written the Landmark History of the American People His textbooks for high schools, A History of the United States (1980), written with Brooks M. Kelley, has been widely adopted. He edited An American Primer (1996) and the thirty-volume series The Chicago History of American Civilization, among other works. He died in 2004.
BY
DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
THE AMERICANS
The Colonial Experience
In Volume I of The Americans Boorstin presents “a superb panorama of life in America from the first settlements on through the white-hot days of the Revolution” (Bruce Lancaster, Saturday Review).
Winner of the Bancroft Prize
History/0–394-70513-0/$12.00 (Can. $15.00)
The National Experience
Boorstin continues his study of Americans, exploring problems of community and the search for a national identity.
“This exceptionally good book … abounds in concrete, entertaining details, and in bright, original ideas about those fascinating people, us.”
—The New Yorker
Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize
History/0-394-70358-8/$14.00 (Can. $17.50)
The Democratic Experience
In the final volume of The Americans, the story of the last 100 years of American history is told “through countless little revolutions in economy, technology, and social rearrangements … illuminated by reflections that are original, judicious and sagacious” (Henry Steele Commager).
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
History/0-394-71011-8/$15.00 (Can. $19.00)
THE DISCOVERERS
A national bestseller when first published, this vivid, sweeping history of man’s search to know his world and himself is written with “a verve, an audacity and a grasp of every sort of knowledge that is outrageous and wonderful” (Alistair Cooke).
History/0-394-72625-1/$16.00 (Can. $21.00)
HIDDEN HISTORY
Exploring Our Secret Past
A collection of 24 incisive essays that examine rhythms, patterns, and institutions of everyday American life—from intimate portraits of legendary figures to expansive discussions of historical phenomena.
“Highly representative of his awesome scope … eminently readable and provocative.”
—Washington Post Book World
History/0-679-72223-8/$12.00 (Can. $16.00)
THE IMAGE
A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
With an Afterword by George F. Will
In this analysis of America’s inundation by illusion, Boorstin introduces the concept of “pseudo-events”—events such as press conferences and presidential debates, which are staged solely in order to be reported—and redefines celebrity as “a person who is known for his well-knownness.” The result is an essential resource for anyone who wants to distinguish the manifold deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.
“A very informative and entertaining and chastising book.” —Harper’s
History/0-679-74180-1/$12.00 (Can. $15.00)
AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE, OR CALL TOLL-FREE TO ORDER: 1-800 733-3000 (CREDIT CARDS ONLY) PRICES SUBJECT TO CHANGE
The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination Page 112