Word: boorstins
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Former Librarian of Congress and Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Boorstin ’34 died of pneumonia last Sunday in Washington...
...Boorstin, a social historian, wrote dozens of books during his lifetime, focusing not on world leaders but on the life of the average person. In 1973, he won the Pulitzer Prize in history for The Democratic Experience, the third volume of his trilogy, The Americans...
...then there's "breaking news." Does news really ever break? Yes, there are real events such as earthquakes, but most news consists of what Daniel Boorstin once called "pseudo-events," concocted stories that are news only because we say they are. News organizations like to boast that they "cover" the news, but in fact, we all make the news because there is no news without us. With apologies to genuine metaphysicians, if an event happens and no one covers it, did it really happen? I'd say no. We in the media give events significance by how we play them...
...publication of many renowned works of 20th century literature in attractive, hardcover volumes, to choose, from an unlimited field of candidates, the 100 best novels written in English since 1900. No big deal--especially since the board is made up of respectable thinkers and writers including Daniel J. Boorstin, A.S. Byatt, Shelby Foote, Edmund Morris, William Styron and Gore Vidal...
...hero--so ran Boorstin's prophecy--was being replaced by the celebrity, and where once our leaders seemed grander versions of ourselves, now they just looked like us on a giant screen. Nowadays, as we read about the purported telephone messages of a sitting President and listen to the future King of England whisper to his mistress, the power of technology not just to dehumanize but to demystify seems 30 times stronger than even Boorstin predicted...