The Americans: The Colonial Experience (A Caravelle Edition)

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Summary: Brilliant, enthralling, ambitious
Review: Boorstin examines the influences Old World ideas had on the New World of America. He pays close attention to how the Old World ideas were transplanted and changed in America. Boorstin demonstrates that this change was present with most every institution or idea brought from Europe to America. The Americans is the winner of the Bancroft Prize, a prestigious award for works in History. And rightly so. Boorstin's The Colonial Experience is extremely well organized, thorough, and related the history of America to me in a contemporary style. I applaud Boorstin, for he has succeeded in writing an excellent book on the history of early America that even a fledgling history student, like myself, could fully grasp without losing any detail.

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Summary: Great read for American Consumer History
Review: Boorstin outlines the fundamentals and development of American consumerism and capitalism of the 19th Century. A great read for understanding why America was the great attraction of emigration. A good emphasis is put forth on how much American ingenuity happened by accident. This book is excellent for describing who we are, how we dressed, how we ate, and how we profited from it. Like the rest of Boorstin's works, this is a must for any student of history!

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Summary: This is why Boorstin is one of my favorites
Review: I love to read American history and Daniel Boorstin is one of the best. After reading this book, I had a much better understanding of the American colonial experience. I also understood to a greater degree the affects that Christianity has had on our culture. In this book, Boorstin compares three colonies. It is interesting to read the cultural differences. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the origins of our nation.

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Summary: Boorstin's take on the American perspective
Review: In writing The Colonial Experience, the first part of his series The Americans, Daniel Boorstin has essentially set down to paper a series of connected events that illustrate what he thinks is the quintessential American experience. Largely positive in tone, Boorstin's assertion is that in early America there was a truly new society formed, and whatever similarities must necessarily continue from Europe, the North American colonies soon developed their own lifestyles, perspectives, beliefs, and cultures.

On the nuts and bolts level, this is a series of topical descriptions. It is not, by any means, a survey history. It will really help if the reader knows something about American history to start out with. That said, a good recollection of middle school lessons would be sufficient, but more would be better. This allows Boorstin to examine in more depth the topics he wishes to cover, without worrying about filling in the gaps everywhere. He starts with a look at the "social character" - for lack of a better term - of settlers in four colonies; Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Virginia. But even here he still keeps the focus on certain aspects of those colonies.

Massachusetts, we all know, what founded by the Puritans, fleeing lack of religious freedom in England and too much of it in Holland. What is it, Boorstin asks, that Puritanism brought to America that gave distinctions to the outlook of those colonists? And how did Puritanism itself change in America? It certainly diverged from English Puritanism. Likewise for the Quakers of Pennsylvania. What was unique and distinctive about Quakerism, and how did it change? What effects did religion have on the running of colonial governments? In Georgia, the foundations were not religious, but philanthropic. The founders wanted to create an American utopia of silkworm farmers in carefully constructed perfect townships with no social injustice or problems of any sort. Boorstin is clearly not sympathetic to this viewpoint, nor do I blame him, but he shows how this distinct viewpoint led to that colony's founding and how it was modified (failed utterly is a better description). And finally, in Virginia, there was no other founding philosophy other than to thrive and profit as each man saw fit. Rather than forming towns, they formed plantations (there were towns, but they were small). The obligation of successful men was only to take part in governing the colony.

Later sections cover other topics, including education, philosophy, science, culture, and others. But the method is the same as the first section. We get a close look at some aspect of life about which Boorstin asks "How did this make America? How did America change this in return?" A number of reviewers have expressed opinions on the specifics of Boorstin's final conclusions. I think he was for the most part sound minded, though he certainly skipped a lot. Many of his ideas sound reminiscent of de Tocqueville, though in how much detail I don't know. There seems to be a bit of a conservative streak in the writing, but it's probably more accurate to call it optimistic - an option available to him by focusing on only certain subjects. In fairness, I do think he hit upon many of the major themes that made America special and unique. So based on his historian's eye for a good story, and generally strong writing overall, I'd say The Colonial Experience is well worth the read whether you happen to agree with everything or not.

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Summary: History at it Best
Review: This is a young work of Boorstin and even years later it still lives up to its greatness. The first book of a trilogy, it sets the tone for the two to follow. We are not given a dry reading of dates and places and wars and settlements. Instead it is a readable story of movements, nations but most the individuals - both known and unknown - whose influence continues with us to this day.

This mix of biographies and historical happenings makes for an enjoyable, entertaining and enlightening work.

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Summary: an uneven hodgepodge
Review: This is not a coherent history, but a series of disjointed stories, all related to the original settlements in the US. THere is virtually no analysis, only poorly documented anecdotes. SOme of them are very good - the chapter on the export of ice from New England to the Caribbean will stick in my mind for the rest of my life - and some much less. From the reviews, it would seem that people liked Boorstin's approach very much. It grated on me as I expected something more from a writer and historian of Boorstin's reputation.

REcommended as pass time reading rather than serious historical research.

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Summary: Interesting perspectives
Review: This portrait of different aspects of colonial American social and governmental tendencies is a very interesting read. Mr. Boorstin's theses are well supported with historical information. His arguments made me reexamine some of my preconceptions about the colonial period and consider in a new light the impact of early American history on the present. That said, the author is not the most scintilating writer among historians. Also, the book ends abrubtly without a summary chapter, which would have been useful. It appears Boorstin performed surgery on a larger _The Americans_ work, slicing it in thirds, without gathering up the entrails and applying a suture.

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Summary: Americans Before America
Review: When Boorstin named his epic trilogy The Americans rather than American History or History of the American People, he greeted the reader with a different approach to history. He arranged his brief chapters thematically rather than chronologically, while maintaining a high level of detail, and thus created a masterwork of compression, a talent Boorstin repeated later in The Creators and The Discoverers.

Volume One covers the American experience from the New England colonies through the War for Independence. The thematic approach might suggest that the question, "What is an American?" can be answered by a grocery list of ideas. Yet if there is one truth about Americans it is that they reveal themselves more in doing than in philosophizing. Unburdened by the systematizing of the European ideologue, they demonstrate repeatedly that they are among the most tolerant people who have inhabited the earth.

For Massachusetts Puritans, orthodoxy and tradition had solved most theoretical questions, freeing them from the theological debates of their European counterparts. The Virginia aristocrats, a remarkable pool of talent, applied the practical skills of running a plantation to running a colony, creating a haven of toleration and rapid growth. By contrast, the fanaticism, utopianism, and pacifism of the Quakers failed to protect Pennsylvania from Indian attacks and drove the Quakers from power. Good intentions did nothing to fix the failed humanitarianism of the Georgia colony.

Americans were great naturalists, learning by experience, experiment, and the evidence of the senses. Where books existed at all, they were more likely to be farming almanacs or medical manuals than heavy tomes in literature or metaphysics.

Americans were least likely to wage war over sacred land or a Bible verse. Moreover, their habits were intensely local and their allegiance was to family, community, and colony, in that order. Militias had to be formed by the command of the British government a thousand miles way. Although citizen soldiers traded their pitchforks for rifles when so ordered, they were quick to return to farming, whether the battle was finished or not. The lack of a standing, professional army drove General Washington to distraction. Here are the roots of civilian control of the military which has haunted us to this day.

Boorstin provides numerous examples to prove, not merely assert, that American character and institutions grew from the facts of American life, not from theory, not from the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers or any age's philosophers. I expected the appearance of certain undeniably significant men-Washington, Adams, Jefferson-but I was surprised to see the amount of time given to the influence of William Penn, William Byrd, Cotton Mather, John Winthrop, and, most notable of all, Ben Franklin, who truly deserved the title of renaissance man. Here are people I can admire. Their example makes volume one the most inspiring of the trilogy.