Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other Daniel Joseph Boorstin (October 1, 1914 – February 28, 2004) was an American historian at the University of Chicago who wrote on many topics in American and world history.
[2][3] Repudiating his youthful membership in the Communist Party, Boorstin became a political conservative and a prominent exponent of consensus history.
His writings were often seen, along with those of historians such as Richard Hofstadter, Louis Hartz and Clinton Rossiter, as belonging to the "consensus school", which emphasized the unity of the American people and downplayed class and social conflict.
His father, Samuel, was a lawyer who participated in the defense of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent who was accused and convicted of the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl.
After Frank's 1915 lynching led to a surge of anti-Semitic sentiment in Georgia, the family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Boorstin was raised.
[2][a] The American National Biography Online states that he joined the Communist Party in 1938 then left it in 1939, when Russia and Germany invaded Poland.
The books were largely celebratory of cultural, social and technological developments in American history, and featured striking story-telling about figures such as Frederic Tudor, the so-called "Ice King" of the early nineteenth century.
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.
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 work is an often-used text in American sociology courses, and Boorstin's concerns about the social effects of technology remain influential.
[3] He died of pneumonia February 28, 2004, in Washington D.C.[6] He was survived by Ruth, his three sons, Paul, Jonathan and David, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
[8][b] David Levy, a history professor at the University of Oklahoma, said humorously in one of his lectures after Boorstin's death: "One can only imagine what he might have achieved, if he had only listened to his father’s advice about where to go to college.
He had several observations about Boorstin's approach to American history that seem to explain why many contemporary historians opposed his appointment to head the Library of Congress.
Rube Goldberg foresaw the road to the electric toothbrush.”[22] One of Boorstin's most influential public programs at MHT were the Frank Nelson Doubleday Lectures, which began in 1972 focusing on 'technology and the frontiers of knowledge' and featured speakers such as writers Saul Bellow, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, and technologists like Sony's founder Akio Morita.
[23] Completed during his Smithsonian tenure and published in June 1973, The Americans: The Democratic Experience was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in early 1974.
[8] In 1984, Boorstin and Architect of the Capitol George White teamed up to persuade Congress to appropriate $81.5 million for rehabilitating two of the LOC's older structures, the Jefferson (1897) and Adams (1939) Buildings.