Word: boorstins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...REASONING in this way, Boorstin explains that Americans could not join into a selfconscious political community in search of high ideals. There was too much space between people, and too much to be accomplished for this sort of arrangement to work. Instead Americans had to settle for a different sense of community. They could unite only in their common desire for wealth and prosperity, and they could feel their unity only by sharing similar consumer products...
...result of all this, says Boorstin, is that the United States became a democracy not of people but of things. He claims that America displayed an honest desire for equality and democracy. But unable to satisfy that desire in any other way, they settled for a social system that ensured equality for each citizen in the sense that everyone would be eating the same McDonald's hamburgers and drinking Coca-Cola...
...well be deceptive to call equality of consumption "democracy"--especially when so many Americans don't possess the means to share in the consumption of most goods. But in any case, it is Boorstin's considered opinion that the application of the democratic ideal to the American condition resulted in the proliferation of low quality franchise operations, the institutionalization of mediocrity and not much else...
...Boorstin's book is full of genuinely entertaining stories of the people and products which went into the making of our democracy of things. A whole chapter of the book is devoted to the inventor of the automatic cash-register...
MOST OF THE STORIES are obscure ones, and with them Boorstin manages to make the 600 pages of his text fun to read. There is no question about Boorstin's writing talent--the treatment of his carefully researched material is thoroughly amusing and compelling...