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The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson
In this classic work by one of America's most distinguished historians, Daniel Boorstin enters into Thomas Jefferson's world of ideas. By analysing writings of 'the Jeffersonian Circle,' Boorstin explores concepts of God, nature, equality, toleration, education and government in order to illuminate their underlying world view. The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson demonstrates why on the 250th anniversary of his birth, this American leader's message has remained relevant to our national crises and grand concerns.
"The volume is too subtle, too rich in ideas for anyone to do justice to it in brief summary, too heavily documented and too carefully wrought for anyone to dismiss its thesis. . . . It is a major contribution not only to Jefferson studies but to American intellectual history. . . . All who work in the history of ideas will find themselves in Mr. Boorstin's debt."—Richard Hofstadter, South Atlantic Monthly
"The volume is too subtle, too rich in ideas for anyone to do justice to it in brief summary, too heavily documented and too carefully wrought for anyone to dismiss its thesis. . . . It is a major contribution not only to Jefferson studies but to American intellectual history. . . . All who work in the history of ideas will find themselves in Mr. Boorstin's debt."—Richard Hofstadter, South Atlantic Monthly
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1948
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About the author
Daniel J. Boorstin
203 books384 followersDaniel Joseph Boorstin was a historian, professor, attorney, and writer. He was appointed twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress from 1975 until 1987.
He graduated from Tulsa's Central High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the age of 15. He graduated with highest honors from Harvard, studied at Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned his PhD at Yale University. He was a lawyer and a university professor at the University of Chicago for 25 years. He also served as director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution.
His The Americans The Democratic Experience received the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in history.
Within the discipline of social theory, Boorstin’s 1961 book The Image A Guide to Pseudo-events in America is an early description of aspects of American life that were later termed hyperreality and postmodernity. In The Image, Boorstin describes shifts in American culture—mainly due to advertising—where the reproduction or simulation of an event becomes more important or "real" than the event itself. He goes on to coin the term pseudo-event which describes events or activities that serve little to no purpose other than to be reproduced through advertisements or other forms of publicity. The idea of pseudo-events closely mirrors work later done by Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord. The work is still often used as a text in American sociology courses.
When President Gerald Ford nominated Boorstin to be Librarian of Congress, the nomination was supported by the Authors League of America but opposed by the American Library Association because Boorstin "was not a library administrator." The Senate confirmed the nomination without debate.
Boorstin died in 2004 in Washington, D.C.
He graduated from Tulsa's Central High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the age of 15. He graduated with highest honors from Harvard, studied at Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned his PhD at Yale University. He was a lawyer and a university professor at the University of Chicago for 25 years. He also served as director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution.
His The Americans The Democratic Experience received the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in history.
Within the discipline of social theory, Boorstin’s 1961 book The Image A Guide to Pseudo-events in America is an early description of aspects of American life that were later termed hyperreality and postmodernity. In The Image, Boorstin describes shifts in American culture—mainly due to advertising—where the reproduction or simulation of an event becomes more important or "real" than the event itself. He goes on to coin the term pseudo-event which describes events or activities that serve little to no purpose other than to be reproduced through advertisements or other forms of publicity. The idea of pseudo-events closely mirrors work later done by Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord. The work is still often used as a text in American sociology courses.
When President Gerald Ford nominated Boorstin to be Librarian of Congress, the nomination was supported by the Authors League of America but opposed by the American Library Association because Boorstin "was not a library administrator." The Senate confirmed the nomination without debate.
Boorstin died in 2004 in Washington, D.C.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 20, 2012
Read this around the 2012 election to try to get some perspective on the billion-dollar marketing mind-fuck that was taking place in my mailbox and all over TV. Despite knowing jack about him, I always figured Thomas Jefferson and I were philosophically aligned--an assumption I based on some lines from a college political debate...12 years ago. It was time to test my assumption and this book seemed to fit the bill.
Synopsis: Book places Jefferson in time and introduces "The Jeffersonians", his philosophical brothers-in-arms including Thomas Paine and Dr. Benjamin Rush. Subsequent chapters use historical documents and author's understanding to paint a picture of what Jefferson and his crew thought about government, science, religion, etc. Pretty perfect for my task.
My bullet-point takeaways about Jefferson:
--hated Philosophy as an abstract discipline. He said, all American philosophical "movements have ended in a refusal to follow philosophy when it might paralyze the hand of the artisan or conqueror." Also: "The natural landscape and the material problems which he shared with his neighbors seemed themselves to make a kind of community which did not need the fiat of Scripture or the support of doctrine." --from the author. Fuck metaphysics. Don't divide reason and the senses. Philosophy should derive only from the fruits of experience.
--rejected tradition and custom. "I am a friend to neology. It is the only way to give to a language copiousness and euphony. Dictionaries are but the depositories of words already legitimated by usage. Society is the workshop in which new ones are elaborated."
--distrusted govt, despite serving two terms as POTUS "All the great laws of society are laws of nature, but how often is the natural propensity to society disturbed or destroyed by the operators of government?" From Thomas Paine "There be but one element of human power: and that element is man himself. Monarchy, aristocracy and democracy are but creatures of the imagination and a thousand such may be contrived as well as three."
Okay to this point I'm with him: rejects overly abstracted philosophies, lifelong love affair with rural living, distrust of the power constructs of man and belief in the primacy of the individual.
Sort of.
Later chapters reveal a lot of hypocrisy:
--Despite philosophical distrust of big government, served two terms as President and was irritated by checks on his power and was instrumental in the Louisiana Purchase which used tax dollars to acquire land for the Federal Government.
--unwittingly paved the way for the Robber Barons by his enthusiasm for conquering the untamed New World. Saw the resources and land as inexhaustible. While he believed in free collaboration, non-competitive science in the pursuit of material comfort for man, later generations took his enthusiasm for conquering the land and left behind his morality, the only thing that might have provided a check. I now blame him for global warming.
--supported "uniform and useful" public education. Ugh. This is how public education got started and became a trade school for factories and corporations. I got the feeling that he believed so much in the American Enterprise that he often discarded his belief in individual rights and freedoms for the practical purposes of furthering the nation.
--his belief in God and a divine plan made him naive, despite his mistrust of the machinations of man and government. He felt that the large size of the country protected agains "temporary delusions" (aka the tyranny of the majority) the way that asking the audience in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire often smooths out wrong guesses through sheer numbers. Also was naive to the power of money in politics: "Corrupting the whole mass will exceed any private resources of wealth." Woops!
Summary:
Jefferson seems to have been a sharp mind equally or more engaged in the day to day problems of establishing a nation and pursuing his interests as he was in formulating his philosophies. As a result, he often contradicted himself by pursuing certain ends through whatever means necessary. I think I probably have a lot in common with him personally, but disagree with a lot of his statements and wouldn't exactly want to bring him back from the dead to be the next President.
Some assorted money quotes I pulled out of the book:
On cities:
"The general desire of men to live by their heads rather than their hands, and the strong allurements of great cities to those who have any turn for dissipation, threaten to make {cities} here, as in Europe, the sinks of voluntary misery."
John Taylor of Caroline (Virginia politician): "The rural life, by the exercise it gives to both the body and mind, secures health and vigor to both; and by combining a thorough knowledge of the real affairs of life, with a necessity for investigating the arcana of nature, and the strongest invitations to the practice of morality, it becomes the best architect of a complete man."
"I never saw an instance of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude and shooting one another."
Thomas Paine: "Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence. The palaces of kings are built upon the bowers of Paradise."
Synopsis: Book places Jefferson in time and introduces "The Jeffersonians", his philosophical brothers-in-arms including Thomas Paine and Dr. Benjamin Rush. Subsequent chapters use historical documents and author's understanding to paint a picture of what Jefferson and his crew thought about government, science, religion, etc. Pretty perfect for my task.
My bullet-point takeaways about Jefferson:
--hated Philosophy as an abstract discipline. He said, all American philosophical "movements have ended in a refusal to follow philosophy when it might paralyze the hand of the artisan or conqueror." Also: "The natural landscape and the material problems which he shared with his neighbors seemed themselves to make a kind of community which did not need the fiat of Scripture or the support of doctrine." --from the author. Fuck metaphysics. Don't divide reason and the senses. Philosophy should derive only from the fruits of experience.
--rejected tradition and custom. "I am a friend to neology. It is the only way to give to a language copiousness and euphony. Dictionaries are but the depositories of words already legitimated by usage. Society is the workshop in which new ones are elaborated."
--distrusted govt, despite serving two terms as POTUS "All the great laws of society are laws of nature, but how often is the natural propensity to society disturbed or destroyed by the operators of government?" From Thomas Paine "There be but one element of human power: and that element is man himself. Monarchy, aristocracy and democracy are but creatures of the imagination and a thousand such may be contrived as well as three."
Okay to this point I'm with him: rejects overly abstracted philosophies, lifelong love affair with rural living, distrust of the power constructs of man and belief in the primacy of the individual.
Sort of.
Later chapters reveal a lot of hypocrisy:
--Despite philosophical distrust of big government, served two terms as President and was irritated by checks on his power and was instrumental in the Louisiana Purchase which used tax dollars to acquire land for the Federal Government.
--unwittingly paved the way for the Robber Barons by his enthusiasm for conquering the untamed New World. Saw the resources and land as inexhaustible. While he believed in free collaboration, non-competitive science in the pursuit of material comfort for man, later generations took his enthusiasm for conquering the land and left behind his morality, the only thing that might have provided a check. I now blame him for global warming.
--supported "uniform and useful" public education. Ugh. This is how public education got started and became a trade school for factories and corporations. I got the feeling that he believed so much in the American Enterprise that he often discarded his belief in individual rights and freedoms for the practical purposes of furthering the nation.
--his belief in God and a divine plan made him naive, despite his mistrust of the machinations of man and government. He felt that the large size of the country protected agains "temporary delusions" (aka the tyranny of the majority) the way that asking the audience in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire often smooths out wrong guesses through sheer numbers. Also was naive to the power of money in politics: "Corrupting the whole mass will exceed any private resources of wealth." Woops!
Summary:
Jefferson seems to have been a sharp mind equally or more engaged in the day to day problems of establishing a nation and pursuing his interests as he was in formulating his philosophies. As a result, he often contradicted himself by pursuing certain ends through whatever means necessary. I think I probably have a lot in common with him personally, but disagree with a lot of his statements and wouldn't exactly want to bring him back from the dead to be the next President.
Some assorted money quotes I pulled out of the book:
On cities:
"The general desire of men to live by their heads rather than their hands, and the strong allurements of great cities to those who have any turn for dissipation, threaten to make {cities} here, as in Europe, the sinks of voluntary misery."
John Taylor of Caroline (Virginia politician): "The rural life, by the exercise it gives to both the body and mind, secures health and vigor to both; and by combining a thorough knowledge of the real affairs of life, with a necessity for investigating the arcana of nature, and the strongest invitations to the practice of morality, it becomes the best architect of a complete man."
"I never saw an instance of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude and shooting one another."
Thomas Paine: "Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence. The palaces of kings are built upon the bowers of Paradise."
August 28, 2014
Boorstin points out very clearly and convincingly how our national character was formed by early settlers and colonists who viewed North America as a vast, unending font of natural resources (land, trees and other flora, fauna of all types) and how the theme of unlimited wealth has continued to shape and mold our national character.
January 19, 2010
Wow! What a great book for seeing what was known and believed during that time. The author stresses that this understanding is key to how we see their decisions were made and what they really meant. Too many of us try to interpret their decisions with today's known facts and beliefs and that often leads us to wrong conclusions. We need more like this book by Danial Boorstin to help us in such a tough ideology time as we have today.
December 30, 2019
It was really interesting to read this since my father was always super into Thomas Jefferson and I didn't know that much about him. I liked the voice of this author and how he described how Jeffersonian thought was so particular to the time and place it was in, and so based on what they understood of natural processes. And pretty frank about all the shitty parts too.
April 16, 2019
Learned things about Jeffersonians that surprised me.
January 2, 2008
essential.
October 16, 2009
This book "lost" me fast.
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September 23, 2010The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson by Daniel J. Boorstin (1993)
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews