Word: boorstins
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...AMERICANS: THE NATIONAL EXPERIENCE by Daniel J. Boorstin. 517 pages. Random House...
...What then is the American, this new man?" Ever since Alexis de Tocqueville asked the question, historians have been trying to provide an answer-sometimes political (Clinton Rossiter), sometimes economic (Charles A. Beard), sometimes sociocultural (Perry Miller). Latest to make the attempt is Daniel Boorstin, Harvard-trained professor of American history at the University of Chicago, who acknowledges many centers of motivation, supplements his studies with insights drawn from psychology, sociology, political science, economics and literary criticism...
...writing a trilogy; the first volume, The Americans: The Colonial Experience, won the Bancroft Prize. In it Boorstin protested what he considered an overemphasis on the European origins of American identity, went in search of the uniquely American in America. Now, in the second volume of this enormously rich and suggestive survey, he considers the period between the Revolution and the Civil War, and seeks to trace in the earliest records of the nation the traits that have dominated its later history...
Technology of Haste. Boorstin approaches the problem region by region. In New England, he finds, adaptation required a monumental psychological change. Poor in natural resources, the New Englander exploited his native resourcefulness. "New England," ran the popular taunt, "produces nothing but granite and ice." So energetic New Englanders, making an economic virtue out of a geographical necessity, harvested their rocky hills and frozen ponds, virtually created the markets for their products, shipped granite to Savannah and New Orleans, ice to Persia, India and Australia. The same restless and ingenious spirit drove New England manufacturers who developed specialized machines to replace...
...mistake the simplicity of this statement for naivite, and this is evidently what reviewer Boorstin did. In fact, President Pusey's view of education is both sophisticated and complex: he realizes the crucial peripheral tasks that a university must perform, but he does not confuse peripheral task with what he conceives of as purpose. After a great deal of agonizing--evident in almost every speech--he has concluded that knowledge for the sake of knowledge is still central to education, and that the university exists in order to support the community that nurtures...