Description
Join the John W. Kluge Center and the Center for the Book for a discussion with Jon Boorstin on his new book, "The American, the Hidden History of Daniel J. Boorstin and his Twentieth Century."
Daniel J. Boorstin, was an American historian and the twelfth Librarian of Congress. He founded the Center for the Book in 1977, the same year it was established by Congress. Today, the Library's Center for the Book network includes 56 affiliate centers: one in every state, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories: American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The event features Jon Boorstin, son of Daniel Boorstin and author of "The American," a book described as "part biography, part family history, and a crucial extension of his father's work."
What does it mean to be an American? Historian Daniel J. Boorstin, one of the twentieth century's most important public intellectuals, spent a lifetime considering that question. In "The American," novelist and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Jon Boorstin explores his father's life through a story of family, racial conflict and immigrant Jewish life in twentieth-century America.
Why did Boorstin — the 1974 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for "The Americans: The Democratic Experience" — write so little about himself? To answer that question, Jon Boorstin reaches back to the beginning of the twentieth century and introduces readers to his immigrant grandfather, Sam Boorstin, a would-be Southern gentleman and the youngest lawyer in Georgia's history.
For transcript and more information, visit https://www.loc.gov/item/video-13197/