Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected
by Daniel Boorstin
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Discoverers demonstrates the truth behind the aphorism that if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the face of the world would have been changed. Boorstin goes on to uncover the elements of accident, improvisation and contradiction at the core of American institutions and beliefs.Tags
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Wasn't what I was expecting from the blurb (hm, maybe I should have expected that...), this is a grouping of various talks and essays. More ranting than history - there's a sustained attack on politically correct language at one point, for example. I disagreed with some of Boorstin's main points - about science being collaborative and art being solitary, and discoverers being celebrated while inventors are not. The chapter I did enjoy was his memorial of his father, a lawyer in Tulsa in its early years. Otherwise, I found Boorstin's apparent belief that life the USA is the height of human progress rather short-sighted and unquestioning. For someone who had lived overseas, his view of life seemed remarkably parochial.
This book had such a fascinating title that I had to buy it- but you need to sit somewhere undisturbed to make your way through it. Doesn't have to be read cover to cover- start at a section: New-World Opportunities, for example.
I don't think there was any essay that really had anything to do with Cleopatra's nose; kind of disappointing since that is what I checked it out for.
This provocative new collection of essays by a Pulitzer Prize winner deals with the challenging themes of discovery and surprise in history.
Aug 19, 2021Spanish
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89+ Works 16,360 Members
A prolific writer, Daniel Boorstin is the author of numerous scholarly and popular works in American Studies. Born in Georgia and raised in Oklahoma, Boorstin received degrees from Harvard and Yale universities and was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. A member of the Massachusetts Bar, he has been visiting professor of American History show more at the Universities of Rome, Puerto Rico, Kyoto, and Geneva. He was the first incumbent of the chair of American History at the Sorbonne and Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge. He taught at the University of Chicago for 25 years. In 1959 Columbia University awarded him its Bancroft Prize for The Americans: The Colonial Experience (1958), the first volume of his trilogy titled The Americans. In 1966 he received the Francis Parkman Award for the second volume, The Americans: The National Experience (1965), and in 1974 he received the Pulitzer Prize for the third volume, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (1973). Many of Boorstin's books have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and various European languages. In 1969 Boorstin became director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution. In 1973 he became senior historian at the Smithsonian. Boorstin was appointed Librarian of Congress in 1975 and served in that position with distinction for 12 years, becoming Librarian Emeritus in 1987. (Publisher Provided) show less
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