Perplexed Patriot

...It is on this particular point-the failure of Americans to honor their past and to study its lessons-that Boorstin's instinctive boosterism confronts his mounting pessimism...

...To his professional colleagues, however, Boorstin is something of an outcast...

...by providing the comforts of air conditioning, modern heating, strawberries in the winter and frozen goods in the summer, it has made them far less aware of the change of seasons...

...Our progress-mad society has unwittingly erased many of life's subtle distinctions, "not just between people but between everything and everything else, between every time and every other time, between every place and every other place...

...For the first time in a long and distinguished career Daniel Boorstin has examined the dynamics of American society and has come away shaken by the experience...

...Our history has proved that this was not to be a Diaspora Nation, of peoples in unhappy exile, but a nation of peoples reborn...

...In short, the old booster has become somewhat less bullish on America...

...The cliches are all there but they no longer seem very reassuring...

...Our entire culture, Boorstin laments, uses up, disposes and replaces...

...We condemn our nation for not yet having allowed perfect justice, and we forget that ours was...

...Reviewed by David Oshinsky Assistant Professor of History, Douglass College, Rutgers For the past two decades Daniel Boorstin has been one of America's more distinguished, prolific and controversial historians...

...We are peculiarly ill-equipped with remembrancers...

...Worse still, Americans are so anxious about what the future holds that they have lost their sense of continuity with the past...

...As if by reflex, the author's patriotic juices begin to flow: "We talk about the war in Vietnam as if it were the first war in American history to which many Americans were opposed...

...Unfortunately, the cost has been high, for many citizens have come to believe that getting "more and more" means "less and less...

...The real problem, he contends, is that at the very moment when Americans are most bewildered by their mounting problems, they seem incapable of recapturing their traditions of courage, optimism and drive...

...people no longer have to leave their homes and join with others to be entertained or educated...

...As David Donald remarked in a highly favorable Commentary review of Boor-stin's The Americans: The Democratic Experience, "It is safe to predict that [this book], like its predecessors, will have very little impact upon the historical profession in the United States...

...In our landscape of democracy . . . physical monumental ties to the past are precious few...

...Boorstin's latest effort...

...Because of great technological advances in manufacturing, communications and transportation, our nation has successfully provided for the needs and wishes of the vast majority of its inhabitants...

...Boorstin further maintains that the growth of radio, television, electronic recorders, and mass-circulation publications has brought on "the decline of congregation...

...To the public at large, he is a most unusual man-A scholar whose publications are fun to read...

...the first to use the full force of law . . . and to enlist the vast majority of its citizens in a strenuous quest for justice for all races and ages and religions...

...For the first time, Boorstin seems perplexed by the course his nation is charting and concerned about the ability of modern technology to solve pressing social problems...

...Each day brings a new technological experience and greater discontent...

...The dilemma we now face, Boorstin feels, stems from the fact that American democracy is no longer simply a political system governed by the spirit of equality, but also "a set of institutions which aim to make everything available to everybody...

...For various reasons, ranging from valid methodological criticism to political intolerance to downright jealousy, his written work has been largely ignored...

...We descend from the fluid societies of wagon trains, of mining camps, of homeland stakers and city builders-the most fluid societies of modern history...

...America, it seems, by virtue of its tremendous wealth, energy and imagination, has reached a state of "attenuation," which Boorstin describes as the thinning out, the ultimate democratization of experience...

...In his view, the media have so cheapened the word through around-the-clock broadcasting, constant repetition and the effort to keep everyone informed about everything that people have lost both the desire to listen carefully and the ability to make any real sense out of the mass of unrelated data...

...We therefore can no longer distinguish between important and unimportant ideas, between natural, spontaneous occurrences and carefully staged events, between the unique aspect of any given moment and the wonders of photography and videotape...

...American technology, Boorstin continues, by creating the concept of vertical space, by offering running water, centralized plumbing and the telephone, has brought people into closer physical proximity while lessening personal contact...

...Unlike most European nations, which carefully protect their old buildings and take great pride in their historic monuments, the United States constantly tears down its grand edifices to make way for new ones...

...Similarly, the development of the corporation, franchising and installment buying has weakened the sacred notion of private property by letting people buy shares of stock in companies they care little about and by giving them physical control over objects they do not fully own...

...Nevertheless, this revision of a series of highly speculative essays delivered at the University of Michigan in the spring of 1972 is sure to raise a few eyebrows...

...it simply sees no need to preserve...

...He writes with style and wit, displays little intellectual pretension, and generally portrays his fellow countrymen (as well as their ancestors) in glowing terms...

...It is not easy to find signs to remind ourselves that the nation was not born yesterday...

...Democracy and Its Discontents, will not win him many converts within academia either...