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 elected a new President. But the 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 for mankind’ 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 (“American Space”) and its battles with the imperatives of
profit - 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 ProfileSimon 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, Simon Schama's Power of Art and the
History of Britain trilogy.
ReviewsSchama 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.,A brilliant antidote to anti-Americanism… his prose is unfailingly entertaining,Schama is scrupulous in matters of fact … Schama is a genius of storytelling … Obama, like Schama, is an intellectual filled with knowledge, pride and optimism …. A historian who radiates such anticipated pleasure is a rare thing. We are lucky to have him,The words tumbling delightfully across the page, the sentences as playfully ornate as the Charlie Parker saxophone solos that Kerouac so adored…also an inspiring and illuminating work of history, a reflection on the essence of America with a bedrock of deep knowledge behind the bebop prose. A more inspiring evocation of the spirit of liberal America – past, present and future – does not exist,This is the most exhilarating book that has been written about America for at least eight years…instantly engaging account…Schama has delivered a glittering tale of America’s past,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,The American Future accompanied Schama’a BBC2 series and is organised in sections corresponding to the TV chronicle’s four episodes. But it would be wrong to think of it as a secondary project: the historian is able to add more detail in print, his eloquence can be savoured without visual distractions, and his approach is arguably better served by a medium where it’s easy to flick backwards.,There is something irresistible about Simon Schama’s writing,Treating American history as a temporal skating rink, Schama zips back and fourth, exploring the civil war and then the evangelical attack on slavery that played a part in igniting the conflict..Schama talks and writes – a blue streak. This gung ho work is wholly in tune with its subject
