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In America Reborn, journalist and historian Martin Walker defines twentieth-century America through the portraits of twenty-six American individuals whose accomplishments, innovations and ideals propelled the United States to a position of global dominance.
Here are the thoughts and beliefs of politicians and performers, thinkers and doers, capitalists and revolutionaries, immigrants and the native born. From Teddy Roosevelt's imperial ambitions to Bill Clinton's global vision; Emma Goldman’s radical ideals to William F. Buckley's profound conservatism; Albert Einstein's elegant theories to Katharine Hepburn's elegant delivery-the biographical essays that make up this narrative show us the variety of American archetypes and offer a vision of how strong individualism has always been the bedrock of (helped make up) the American character.
- Sales Rank: #666528 in Books
- Published on: 2001-07-10
- Released on: 2001-07-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.00" w x 5.00" l, .85 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 416 pages
Amazon.com Review
With the detailed expertise of a historian and the insight of a contemporary, Martin Walker presents a narrative of the outgoing American century through individual portraits of 26 of its most influential participants. Beginning with Teddy Roosevelt and concluding with Bill Clinton, Walker's portraits are less biographical than they are temporal; he brings to life particular moments in the 1900s that his subjects helped shape. For example, his narrative of William Boeing traces the history of American aviation from its origins to the present. After World War I, Boeing, Martin, Loughead, Northrop, and Douglas recognized the potential for commercial aviation, and the industry was born. Walker then outlines the shift into aerospace when President Kennedy pledged to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, and the industry's present contraction into two conglomerates, competing with Europe's Airbus consortium.
Former bureau chief of The Guardian and author of several critically acclaimed books, Walker is a seasoned, skilled writer. His portraits read easily. Averaging 15 pages, they can be read individually or as part of the larger narrative. Each of them illustrates the "primacy of the individual" and the powerful "cult of the winner," unique characteristics of American society that lead the author to consider the 20th century the "American century" and America the cultural, economic, and political world leader. --Bertina Loeffler Sedlack
From Publishers Weekly
As the title suggests, British journalist Walker (The Cold War: A History, etc.) views history through the prism of biography in his engaging, though sometimes superficial, chronicle of the U.S.'s political, social and economic development over the course of the 20th century. Each chapter takes a well-known individual as a paradigm for a larger development ("Emma Goldman and the American Dissident," "Lucky Luciano and the American Criminal," etc.). The early chapters are essentially recapitulations of received wisdom: for instance, Henry Ford invents mass production and realizes he must also create a mass consumer class, hence the five-dollar day for his workers. When the choices are not conventional, they can be arguable: Katharine Hepburn is hardly a typical Hollywood star, and using Winston Churchill (whose mother was American) as a way of examining "the American diaspora" (whose meaning is never satisfactorily clarified) simply doesn't work. As the narrative approaches the 1970s, when Walker began reporting in the U.S., it sharpens considerably. Particularly strong is the chapter on Richard Nixon, in which Walker argues that the most important of the "three strategic disasters that marked his presidency" was neither Watergate nor the fall of Saigon but Nixon's decision to abandon the gold standard and devalue the dollar, which led to the ghastly inflation of the '70s and the resulting triumph of Reaganomics in the '80s. Throughout his accessible text, the author also does a good job of tracing his main theme, the nation's century-long struggle to deal with Americans' ambivalence about international involvement. There's little new here, but Walker's lively popular history is generally informative and appealing. 26 photos. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Walker, a prize-winning journalist and author of books on recent history (e.g., The President We Deserve: Bill Clinton; His Rise, Falls, and Comebacks, LJ 8/96), uses an almost novelistic approach to the telling of America's story. This is not a simple collection of biographical sketches but a history that employs personal stories--from Teddy Roosevelt to Babe Ruth, Henry Ford to Katharine Hepburn, Duke Ellington to Bill Clinton--as touchstones for a wide-ranging discussion of our culture. Lacking a scholarly approach, the book is meant to be enjoyed as a narrative. The names chosen are judicious and represent for Walker the most remarkable and important. Similar adult books have appeared over the years (e.g., JFK's Profiles in Courage) but none as sweeping or as well written. A top priority for all libraries, especially small public libraries with limited budgets.
-Edward Gibson, Lincoln Univ. Lib., PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
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Four Stars
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Stillreading
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
On Whose Shoulders We Stand
By Robert Morris
This is one of the most enjoyable as well as one of the most informative books I have read in recent years. Walker's purpose is to "describe and explain the American century through the lives and careers of a handful of individual Americans." He discusses 26, each whom he views as representative of a specific component within the evolution of American civilization. For example, Teddy Roosevelt (Ambition), Emma Goldman (Dissidence), Woodrow Wilson (Idealism), William Boeing (Air Transportation), Lucky Luciano (Crime), Katherine Hepburn (Stardom), and Alan Greenspan (Banking).
One of my favorites of the 22 essays is that which discusses Walt Disney (representative of American Entertainment). Walker first quotes Joseph Nye: "Soft power occurs when one country gets other countries to want what it wants, in contrast with the `hard' or coercive power of ordering others to do what it wants." In response, he suggests that "the essence of America's new global hegemony was that the United States was not only the unique military superpower but also the dominant soft superpower, which [because of Disney's films] invented the world's dreams and defined its aspirations....The Disney Corporation has become the heartland of soft culture's colonial realm. It is unmatched in pillaging there cultures of others to repackage them in Disney's universal vocabulary....[Disney] aimed for what he once described as `that deathless, ageless, absolutely primitive remnant of something in every world-wracked human being which makes us play with children's toys and laugh without self-consciousness at silly things....You know, the Mickey in us'." These brief excerpts correctly indicate Walker's highly subjective and yet circumspect perspective on 22 quite unique Americans. I have already mentioned eight. The others are "Black Jack" Pershing, Henry Ford, Babe Ruth, Duke Ellington, Winston Churchill, Frank Lloyd Wright, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Walter Reuther, John Steinbeck, Albert Einstein, George Marshall, William F. Buckley, Jr., Richard Bissell, Billy Graham, Richard Nixon, Martin Luther King, Jr., Betty Friedan, and Bill Clinton. If your desire is to understand America in the 20th century, I cannot think of another combination of lives and careers which will contribute more to that understanding than do those whom Walker discusses with eloquence and insight in this remarkable volume.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Twenty-six heroes, one American century
By N. Tsafos
Admittedly, ever since Alexis de Tocqueville wrote "Democracy in America" the bar has been set high for those wishing to dissect and explain the American psyche. Though not aspiring to do any such thing, journalist Martin Walker has come very close to it by encapsulating the essential and enduring features that define the American character.
"I suspect that this book began unconsciously as a love letter to America from a foreigner who sees it both as a second home and as an inspiration." Thus Mr. Walker begins "America Reborn," and what follows is a chronicle of the twentieth century as marked by the lasting footprints of twenty-six larger-than-life Americans.
Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt's ambition and ending with Bill Clinton's new America, "America Reborn" is a sweeping narrative that couples people with their impacts on American life-Roosevelt with ambition, Woodrow Wilson with idealism, William Pershing with the army, and so on. But Mr. Walker knows that there is more to America than politics: his book includes such diverse personalities as Babe Ruth, Duke Ellington, John Steinbeck, Walt Disney, Lucky Luciano, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Katherine Hepburn.
In the end, the book does feel like a "love letter to America." But it is not the kind of love which would blind the author; perhaps, it resembles that of Emma Goldman, one of Mr. Walker's heroes: "the kind of patriotism we represent is the kind which loves America with open eyes. Our relation to America is the same as the relation of a man who loves a woman, who is enchanted by her beauty and yet who cannot be blind to her defects." It this simultaneous love and concern which makes the book both candid and remarkably enjoying.
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