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Hidden History: Exploring Our Secret Past |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Louisiana History > Item 83
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Hidden History: Exploring Our Secret Past
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by Daniel J. Boorstin
Sales Rank: 200128
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List Price: $15.00
$10.20
At Amazon
on 6-19-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 368 pages
Published by: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books Ed edition May 14, 1989
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0679722238
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0679722236
Book Dimensions:
8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
Weighs: 10.9 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
In his 70s, Boorstin recently retired as Librarian of Congress, a position that he had held since 1975 that capped his career as one of America's eminent historians. In this collection of essays the author of The Discovers and the trilogy The Americans writes with the breadth and vitality that mark all his books. His title has deliberate meaning: Boorstin implies the historian's need to probe socio-political patterns from philosophical and uncliched angles. Here he recaptures his "historical adventures," ranging from a study of the historian's discipline (his insight into Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as an "intimate" work is rich and subtle) through a look at America as a "By-Product Nation" not greatly driven by theories, but rather formed by action under stress (he sees FDR's four-term presidency as an example). And finally, a series of segments from his writingspresent his views of America's "unsung" political experiments. Boorstin's closing emphasis on our unacknowledged dominance by the "kingdom of the Machine" leads readers to hope for his further expansion of this theme.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Review
"His flair for the vivid anecdote, fresh points of view and understanding of the dramatic relationship of ideas have made him the most readable of our eminent historians." -- Clifton Fadiman
"I have learned a great deal about the USA from Professor Boorstin. He knows this country of ours as few historians know it."
Reader Reviews
This review is from: Hidden History : Exploring Our Secret Past (Hardcover)
Daniel Boorstin is one of the men I'd like to invite to dinner along with Justice Renquist and Thomas Jefferson. He's a historian par excellence. In HIDDEN HISTORY he publishes a series of essays that explore the more unfamiliar aspects of familiar events. HIDDEN HISTORY helps us to see our forefathers in unexpected roles and learn to see our society from new perspectives. "...the prize for which Europeans would have to shed blood would seem the free native birthright of Americans," he writes. "The history of the United States has thus had a unity and coherence unknown in Europe. Many factors -- our geographical isolation, our special opportunities for expansion and exploitation within our own borders and our remoteness from Europe have, of course, contributed...but, whatever the causes, the winds of dogma and the gusts of revolution which during the last two centuries have blown violently over Western Europe...have not ruffled our intellectual climate." Boorstin says that the American Revolution was hardly a revolution at all, at least not in the sense of the modern European understanding of evolution. He quotes Alexis de Tocqueville, "the social condition and the Constitution of the Americans are democratic, but they have not had a democratic revolution." Boorstin says this fact "is surely one of the most important of our history." Boorstin's theories, his arguments, the pictures he presents of events and people who shaped our nation's history -- all jolt the reader's awareness and awaken to higher interest and sensibilities. They fan the flicker of patriotism that hides in complacency. HIDDEN HISTORY is scholarly but it is far from dull. It challenges our perceptions of our own history and our role in the world; it whets the appetite for understanding. It should NEVER go out of print.
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Hidden History: Exploring Our Secret Past
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