Daniel J. Boorstin

Historian

• Born: October 1, 1914
• Birthplace: Atlanta, Georgia
• Died: February 28, 2004
• Place of death: Washington, D.C.

A scholar and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Boorstin headed the Library of Congress and was a foremost proponent of the consensus approach to history.

Early Life

Daniel Boorstin (BOR-stihn) was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Samuel Aaron and Dora Olsan Boorstin, second-generation descendants of Jews fleeing persecution in czarist Russia. Anti-Semitic prejudice was common throughout the Deep South in the early twentieth century, and Daniel Boorstin’s father attracted regional scorn when he served as the counsel for Leo Frank, a Jewish factory worker who allegedly raped and murdered a non-Jewish teenage girl. Frank was later lynched, forcing the Boorstin family, then closely associated with Frank, to flee the state to avoid the wave of anti-Semitic violence engulfing the region. The family settled in Oklahoma, where Boorstin graduated from Tulsa Central High School in his early teens. He enrolled in Harvard University at the age of fifteen, where he majored in English history and literature. After graduating with honors in 1934, Boorstin became a Rhodes scholar and attended Balliol College at Oxford, where he earned another bachelor of arts and then a civil law degree in 1937. Back in America, Boorstin enrolled in Yale University’s Law School and began teaching at Harvard. It was during this period that Boorstin began a brief flirtation with communism. He soon found that Soviet oppression and the Nazi-Soviet Pact were evidence of the movement’s hypocrisy. He quit the organization and renounced his participation in it. During the same period, he began a journey that would take him from being a promising lawyer to a noteworthy historian.

Life’s Work

In 1944, Boorstin accepted an invitation to serve in the department of history at the University of Chicago, partially on the strength of his first published work, The Mysterious Science of the Law (1941), which examines Sir William Blackstone’s commentaries on English law. He worked at the University of Chicago for the next twenty-five years. While there, Boorstin was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1953, where he faced questioning about his former Communist affiliation and provided the names of others who joined the Communist cause. By this time, Boorstin’s youthful radicalism had been replaced by a pragmatic conservatism that marked the remainder of his career. During this period, Boorstin became one of the leading proponents of the consensus school of history that found unity rather than conflict in America’s past and celebrated American exceptionalism. Writing at the height of the Cold War, consensus scholars assaulted the relativist view of history that had once dominated the profession. Boorstin’s The Genius of American Politics (1953) underscored his consensus credentials. In it, he argued that America’s political system remained nonideological in nature, the byproduct of pragmatic rather than dogmatic responses to the challenges faced in North America. Boorstin began writing a trilogy titled The Americans in 1958. Each book in the series received important awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Bancroft Prize.

In 1969, Boorstin abandoned academia for the directorship of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of History and Technology. He stepped down from the post in 1973 but remained with the museum as senior historian. Despite some congressional concerns about his conservatism, Boorstin became the Librarian of Congress, working hard to make the institution more accessible to both scholars and the general public. Boorstin held that post from 1975 to 1987, during which he continued to publish. He commenced publication of another popular trilogy that included The Discoverers (1983), The Creators (1992), and The Seekers (1995). In retirement, Boorstin continued to write, remained active in the publishing industry, and worked to spread his love of reading and books. Boorstin died of pneumonia in 2004.

Significance

Boorstin’s books enjoyed a readership in the millions. In them, he advanced a popular theme of mankind finding simple solutions to the seemingly complex problems that it faced. His writings also proved remarkably prescient. Boorstin’s 1962 treatise, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, warned how the proliferation of new technology had dulled peoples’ senses, creating a vapid popular culture where the vicarious thrill and the sound byte was preferred to reality. The Image, like so many of his other works, struck a resonant chord with Americans.

Bibliography

Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The Colonial Experience. New York: Vintage Books, 1964. Bancroft Prize-winning book that explores the roots of modern America in the nation’s colonial period.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Genius of American Politics. 1953. Reprint. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. A classic of consensus historiography, this book reflects Boorstin’s vision of the American nation, which remained consistent throughout his life. Emphasizes how American institutions forged on the American continent were not exportable abroad.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Mysterious Science of Law: An Essay on Blackstone’s Commentaries. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Boorstin’s first book, originally published in 1941, reveals the young scholar’s talent and reflects his early interest in the law.

Galgano, Michael J., J. Christopher Arndt, and Raymond M. Hyser. Doing History: Research and Writing in the Digital Age. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2007. Offers a brief analysis of the transformation and the evolution of the American historical profession. Boorstin’s consensus school is given considerable attention.

Oshinsky, David M. A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Examines anti-Communist hysteria in America in the 1950’s; offers context for Boorstin’s embrace of consensus historiography at the same time.