What does it mean to be American? Daniel J. Boorstin spent a lifetime pondering that question, and many people thought he came as close to anyone as capturing that enigmatic phantom, the American spirit.
As the twelfth Librarian of Congress and University of Chicago professor, Boorstin tackled all of humanity's scientific history in The Discoverers, but most of his life was devoted to telling the nation's story in The Americans. His work was embraced by readers for his celebration of frontier optimism and America's infinite capacity for hope.
He wrote half a million words about being American, yet he wrote just nine pages about himself. His own story suggests a more complicated truth. In searching out the America that shaped Daniel J. Boorstin, his novelist-filmmaker son, Jon, confronts the story Daniel never told, a true story about fathers and sons, about Jews and race, and the price of becoming an American.
Daniel grew up living the kind of history he didn't write about. His father, Sam, was a Jew from Georgia, a would-be Southern Gentleman and good friend and legal counsel to Leo Frank, who was lynched in America's most notorious antisemitic incident. Sam fled Atlanta with his family to another unlikely Jewish home, burgeoning Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was then just becoming the self-proclaimed oil capital of the world. There Sam lived through the infamous Tulsa Massacre, the venomous race riot that destroyed the prosperous Black town-within-a-town. Jon describes how despite these tragedies, Sam Boorstin's booster spirit and his idiosyncratic morality combined to shape Daniel's affirmative views of America and Americans.
Jon explores Daniel's lifelong friendship witt distinguished Black history, John Hope Franklin, whose father lost everything in the Tulsa Massacre. He shows how these two celebrated sons of the city, who faced such prejudice, managed to remain optimistic about America. With affection, respect, and a sharp critical eye, Jon Boorstin illuminates the hidden history behind his father's important work, and renews our own faith in the future.
