Boorstin Critique Essay

Boorstin Critique Essay Boorstin Critique Essay William Smith Modern American History Boorstin Critique 29JAN09 American History has been presented in many forms. Students today often receive it in a textbook format or something of that sort. The writing style and format is usually based on giving facts is succession, thus leaving the reader disconnected from history learning. These textbooks are based on a broad fact timeline; they ignore the smaller revolutions that do not occur on battlefields. The Americans: The Democratic Experience by Daniel Boorstin does something different. It brings the reader into American History and allows him to understand the little things that shaped American life. Boorstin has written an interesting book that allows the reader look at American History in an atypical way. The book’s strengths and weaknesses engaged me in a unique way, compared to the styles presented to me in my previous experience. Boorstin begins the book with a fascinating thesis that ultimately explains his presiding theme. I found this thesis to be interesting because of its unordin ary take on an ordinary theme of history. Many history textbooks simply base their content on each major revolution that occurred in the time period they wish to analyze. Common history books provide a chronology of events that often ignore individuals and community feeling, while focusing on government or majority leaders. Boorstin’s thesis states that he will not be doing this. He takes the ordinary theme of revolution and surprisingly chooses to focus on the smaller, more subtle revolutions that occurred in places that you could find all over America. He argues that the changes that occurred in the country happened in places you would not think to look. This fact provided me with a hook, being that he intended to explain what it felt like to be an American rather than simply providing a timeline. The next step for me was to discover if the evidence was there, and feel history in a different way. Boorstin proves his points in a very persuasive way. He takes a specific idea or theory and gives many examples to prove it or strengthen it. For example, his main theory of American Gos of this include, Rockefeller, G. Stanley Hall, John Dewey,