Word: panegyrist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...itself, thinks James Truslow Adams, is the noble experiment. He calls it the "American dream." In this one-volume history of the U. S. he shows the beginnings of the dream, its sinkings into nightmare, its lapses into crude daylight reality, its volatile rises. Professional historian, no mealy-mouthed panegyrist, Adams has written his epic in curt, clear narrative; but "the epic loses all its glory without the dream. The statistics of size, population, and wealth would mean nothing to me unless I could still believe in the dream...
Because the U. S. colonists were subject to laws passed by a far-away Parliament they drifted "toward the belief that if a law interfered with their business and profits it need not be obeyed." No more an iconoclast than a panegyrist, Adams thinks Washington saved the U. S., not by military brilliance but by force of character: "In plain truth we see now that the Revolution was only saved from being an abortive rebellion by two factors . . . one the character of Washington, and the other the marshaling against England of European powers." Many of the "best people" were Tories...
...mark, so he was called a great man. He had the kind of brains often prized as first-class because it produces numerically big results. Though one of his technical peers (Lord Salisbury) called his magnum opus "a journal produced by office boys for office boys," Panegyrist Hamilton Fyfe dares repeat the slur, trusting in his faith that the big battalions are on the side...