A
timely and masterful history of the world's most controversial superpower, by one of the world's most
popular and distinguished historians.
In November 2008 the United States will elect a new President. But the imminent collapse of twenty years of Republican conservativism means
the country is already conducting an intense self-examination about the trajectory of its history; how it came to find itself in multiple crises and how an America that began as ‘the last, best hope of earth’ came to be so suspected and vilified around much of the world.
*
The American Future: A History, written by an author who has spent half his life there, takes the long view of how the United States has come to this anguished moment of truth about its own identity as a nation and its place in the world.
* In each of the chapters devoted to the most compelling issues facing Americans now – the projection of
power (“American war”) ;
race, immigration and the problematic promise of
e pluribus unum (“American skin”); the intensity of
religious conviction in public life (“American fervour”) ; the mystique of American
land and its battles with the imperatives of
profit ('American Plenty'- Schama traces the deep history of the present crisis.
* Cumulatively the chapters build into
a history of American exceptionalism – the ‘American difference’ that means so much to its people but which has led it into calamities as well as triumphs.
*
The American Future: A History argues that if you want to know what is truly at stake, you need to absorb these stories and understand this history – for understanding is the condition of hope.
Author Biography
Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York, and was awarded a C.B.E. in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List. Since 1995 he has been art and culture critic for
The New Yorker and essayist for
The Guardian. His award-winning books include
Citizens; Rembrandt's Eyes and the
History of Britain trilogy. His most recent book,
Simon Schama's Power of Art, was published to critical acclaim in 2006.
Reviews
Schama has a masterly ability to conjure up character and vivify conflict.,He remains a master storyteller, admirably and sceptically well read in current revisionist histories.,Simon Schama is many things: widely ranging historian, art critic, public intellectual, television don… This ragged, brilliant, hopscotching volume of vaguely connected essays is largely about America’s myth of its own exceptionalism,The master storyteller takes on the greatest story of our time, America … Britain’s foremost historian comes to a greater understanding of its present and future. Essential reading,Schama remains the subtlest of story-tellers… fans of Schama will wish the book were twice as long… What makes this book so bracing is the way Schama shows how unlike itself America has become,A superb achievement…Schama has a gift for fluid prose that allows one to breeze through the book at a remarkable clip…engaging and informative,Subtle and richly textured.,The history book that gave me the most pleasure this year…this extraordinary essay also set the scene better than anything else published for Barack Obama’s election as president.
