Buccaneer
03-16-2006, 09:18 PM
I have just started Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History by Pulitzer Prize author Walter McDougall. In the preface, he took a self-deprecating approach in thinking, "why do we need another American history". He didn’t think we did. He had wanted to interrelate geography, technology, demography, mythology and federative power but found that too daunting. Instead he picked up on the central theme of portraying Americans as hustlers in the sense of self-promoters and self-reinventers. "Hustler" has a negative sense but it also can be used in a positive sense: builders, doers, go-getters, dreamers, hard workers, inventors, organizers, engineers and of generosity.
Here’s an excerpt from the intro chapter that I find very interesting (and a connection to something that most of us here love):
What is novel about Americans, as their novelists repeatedly teach [Melville, Twain, Cather], is not that they are better or worse than peoples of other places and times, but they are freer than other peoples to pursue happiness and yet are no happier for it. Therein lies the source of America’s disappointment. Only free people can disappoint and be disappointed by the discovery that worldly ideals cannot be advanced except by worldly means. That raises the historical question: how did it happen that Americans managed to seize such freedom, conceive such ideals, achieve such success, yet grieve over such disappointment? Did they think themselves somehow exempt from the curses of Adam and Eve?
A short answer can be had by conducting a thought experiment based on a popular computer game [my emphasis]. The player begins with an endowment of land, resources, and people, and play God in an effort to build up a civilization [sounds familiar?]. Imagine a continent, heavily forested, plentifully watered, fertile, rich in metals and fossil resources, situated in the most benign latitudes of the north temperate zone. Imagine the continent vacated but for a few millions neolithic tribespeople scattered over thousand of miles and vulnerable to diseases pandemic in the rest of the world. Imagine, too, a restless, advanced civilization across the sea, whose own population is starting to soar. Now introduce on the coasts of your continent tens of thousands, then millions of Britons, leavened by a mix of Germans, Frenchmen, and others, endowed with all the power, ideas, and ambitions of the Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, and Scientific Revolution. Having imagined all this, all you need do is cry, "Let the games begin!" and you have your American Genesis.
From the reviews, this is (thankfully) a fairly objective, even-handed view of American history - setting apart from the hagiographies of yesterday and the mean-spirited scorn histories of today.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060197897/qid=1142564339/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-5708677-0588615?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060197897/qid=1142564339/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-5708677-0588615?s=books&v=glance&n=283155)
Does this connect with anyone?
Here’s an excerpt from the intro chapter that I find very interesting (and a connection to something that most of us here love):
What is novel about Americans, as their novelists repeatedly teach [Melville, Twain, Cather], is not that they are better or worse than peoples of other places and times, but they are freer than other peoples to pursue happiness and yet are no happier for it. Therein lies the source of America’s disappointment. Only free people can disappoint and be disappointed by the discovery that worldly ideals cannot be advanced except by worldly means. That raises the historical question: how did it happen that Americans managed to seize such freedom, conceive such ideals, achieve such success, yet grieve over such disappointment? Did they think themselves somehow exempt from the curses of Adam and Eve?
A short answer can be had by conducting a thought experiment based on a popular computer game [my emphasis]. The player begins with an endowment of land, resources, and people, and play God in an effort to build up a civilization [sounds familiar?]. Imagine a continent, heavily forested, plentifully watered, fertile, rich in metals and fossil resources, situated in the most benign latitudes of the north temperate zone. Imagine the continent vacated but for a few millions neolithic tribespeople scattered over thousand of miles and vulnerable to diseases pandemic in the rest of the world. Imagine, too, a restless, advanced civilization across the sea, whose own population is starting to soar. Now introduce on the coasts of your continent tens of thousands, then millions of Britons, leavened by a mix of Germans, Frenchmen, and others, endowed with all the power, ideas, and ambitions of the Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, and Scientific Revolution. Having imagined all this, all you need do is cry, "Let the games begin!" and you have your American Genesis.
From the reviews, this is (thankfully) a fairly objective, even-handed view of American history - setting apart from the hagiographies of yesterday and the mean-spirited scorn histories of today.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060197897/qid=1142564339/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-5708677-0588615?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060197897/qid=1142564339/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-5708677-0588615?s=books&v=glance&n=283155)
Does this connect with anyone?