A timely and masterful history of the world's most controversial superpower, by one of the nation's most popular and prestigious historians.
Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University. His award-winning books, translated into fifteen languages, include Citizens, Landscape and Memory, Rembrandt's Eyes, A History of Britain, The Power of Art, Rough Crossings, The American Future, The Face of Britain and The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words (1000 BCE - 1492). His art columns for the New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for criticism and his journalism has appeared regularly in the Guardian and the Financial Times where he is Contributing Editor. He has written and presented forty films for BBC2 on subjects as diverse as Tolstoy, American politics and John Donne.
Schama is a genius of storytelling
*The Times*
The American Future shares Kerouac's almost inebriated eloquence,
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
*Financial Times*
The master storyteller takes on the greatest story of our time,
America ... Essential reading
*Tatler*
This is the most exhilarating book that has been written about
America for at least eight years...ebulliently
combative...instantly engaging...weaving the immediate present with
its earlier history... Schama has delivered a glittering tale of
America's past
*Spectator*
A wonderfully thought-provoking book... Schama continually
illuminates the broad sweep of events with reference to telling
details...fascinating
*Daily Express*
In this companion to a BBC documentary about the 2008 presidential campaign, British transplant Schama (University Professor of Art History & History, Columbia Univ.; Rough Crossings)-a foremost revivalist of the grand narrative historiographic tradition-trains his interpretive virtuosity on the United States. Schama, who views Obama's triumphant ascendancy as the realization of the grandest American values, ties campaign themes to the larger historical traditions, tensions, and contests that gave rise to them. He cuts back and forth between vignettes of his visits to Nevada, Texas, and Georgia, among other locales, and startlingly original takes on America's practices of democratic warring, deep but diverse religiosity, ethnic and racial identity, and grabs for land, water, and energy. Some readers will be put off by the author's affectionate but condescending assumption of dialect-inflected depictions of Iowan voters, Mexican American veterans, and Mississippian Civil Rights heroines, but these passages are comparatively brief. In the end, while Schama makes a real contribution to an understanding of how America is special (and imperiled), this work is not based on archival research and does not reveal new stories that illuminate a complex past. Appropriate for all readers but perhaps best for the general public. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/09.]-Scott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
Schama is a genius of storytelling * The Times *
The American Future shares Kerouac's almost inebriated
eloquence, 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 -- Niall Ferguson * Financial Times *
The master storyteller takes on the greatest story of our time,
America ... Essential reading * Tatler *
This is the most exhilarating book that has been written about
America for at least eight years...ebulliently
combative...instantly engaging...weaving the immediate present with
its earlier history... Schama has delivered a glittering tale of
America's past * Spectator *
A wonderfully thought-provoking book... Schama continually
illuminates the broad sweep of events with reference to telling
details...fascinating * Daily Express *
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