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Daniel Joseph Boorstin (October 1, 1914 – February 28, 2004) was an American historian, professor, attorney, and writer. He was appointed twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress from 1975 until 1987.
stin was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and died in Washington, D.C. He graduated with highest honors from Harvard, studied at Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned his PhD at Yale University.
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Quotations
Bob de Graff, who started Pocket Books, had a patent on a non-re-readable book, bound like a sealed memo pad, from which you would tear each page after you'd read it.
The Image; or, What Happened to the American Dream (1961)
These creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer...But the arts are another story - a story of infinite addition. We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination.
The Creators
I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.
Wall Street Journal, 31 December 1985 , on why he did his writing at home from 6:30 to 8:30 AM
Encyclopedia
Daniel Joseph Boorstin (October 1, 1914 – February 28, 2004) was an American historian, professor, attorney, and writer. He was appointed twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress from 1975 until 1987.
Biography
Boorstin was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and died in Washington, D.C. He graduated with highest honors from Harvard, studied at Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned his PhD at Yale University. He was a lawyer and a university professor at the University of Chicago for 25 years. He also served as director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution. Boorstin wrote more than 20 books, including a trilogy on the American experience and one on world intellectual history. The Americans: The Democratic Experience, the final book in the first trilogy, received the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in history. Boorstin also wrote the books The Discoverers, The Creators and The Seekers, a trilogy of books that attempt to survey the scientific, artistic and philosophic histories of humanity, respectively.
Within the discipline of social theory, Boorstin’s 1961 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America is an early, description of aspects of American life that were later termed hyperreality and postmodernity. In The Image, Boorstin describes shifts in American culture — mainly due to advertising — where the reproduction or simulation of an event becomes more important or "real" than the event itself. He goes on to coin the term pseudo-event which describes events or activities that serve little to no purpose other than to be reproduced through advertisements or other forms of publicity. The idea of pseudo-events closely mirrors work later done by Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord. The work is still often used as a text in American sociology courses.
When President Gerald Ford nominated Boorstin to be Librarian of Congress, the nomination was supported by the Authors League of America but opposed by the American Library Association because Boorstin "was not a library administrator." The Senate confirmed the nomination without debate.
Honors
Boorstin was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure, First Class, by the Japanese government in 1986.
Books
- 1941 The Mysterious Science of the Law
- 1948 The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson
- 1953 The Genius of American Politics
- 1958 The Americans: The Colonial Experience
- 1960 America and the Image of Europe:Reflections on American Thought
- 1962 The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America
- 1965 The Americans: The National Experience
- 1968 The Landmark History of the American People: From Plymouth to Appomattox
- 1969 The Decline of Radicalism: Reflections of America Today
- 1970 The Landmark History of the American People: From Appomattox to the Moon
- 1970 The Sociology of the Absurd: Or, the Application of Professor X
- 1973 The Americans: The Democratic Experience
- 1974 Democracy and Its Discontents: Reflections on Everyday America
- 1976 The Exploring Spirit: America and the World, Then and Now
- 1978 The Republic of Technology
- 1981 The History of the United States with Brooks M. Kelley and Ruth Frankel
- 1983 The Discoverers
- 1987 Hidden History
- 1992 The Creators
- 1994 Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected
- 1998 The Seekers
External links
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