OCR Text |
Show liiay kl at itttiHi SCRAPBOOKS The many faces of America, past and present BY LI WARD MORRIS and showcasing the American identity is a fruitful endeavor for who take up the challenge this season with a quartet of fine new gift events from our countrys Spotlighting spectacular and history and examining the roots of our national character, these selections shed new light on a seemingly inexhaustible subject. here is v irtually no page unillustrated in The Story Of Amern a ( K, $35, 672 pages, ISBN 078948903 ), a splendidly designed and colloquially written history by Allen Weinstein and )avid Rubel. Besides the predictable head shots of the great and the curious, there are also copious images of tools, costumes, coins, buildings, maps, political cartoons, posters, magazine covers, handbills and kindred historical artifacts. Subtilled Freedom and Crisis from Settlement to Superpower, the book begins with the conquests of Cortes and concludes with the terrorist and their immediate aftermath. attacks of September To make the evolution of the nation more understandable, the authors pinpoint 2b specific events among them the Salem witch trials, John Browns raid on the armory at Harpers Ferry, the and present them with cinematic immediaWatergate investigations 'I liese are accounts cy. complemented by succinct profiles, written by other historians, of such pivotal political, social and cultural figures as Supreme Court justice John Marshall, abolitionist Harriet Tubman, Native American warrior and statesman Quanah Parker and playwright and activist Lillian Heilman. Clearly organized and well indexed, The Story o) America is a visual delight that will give American history buffs hours of browsing pleasure. Treedom: A History of US by Joy Hakim (Oxford, $40, 416 pages, ISBN 0195157117) is a companion piece to the forthcoming PBS series, Freedom: A History Of LS, which will begin airing Jan. 12. A former teacher, reporter and editorial writer, I lakim first gained fame as a historian with her History Of lS, written as texts for elementary school students. This new book aspires to an older audience, although it remains exceedingly readable and filled with the enthusiasm Hakim brought to her original work. She writes much of her narrative in present tense to heighten the notion that long-agevents are occurring before our eyes. In the South, where blacks often outnumber whites, many whites don't want black people to have guns," Hakim observes in a passage on the use of black soldiers in the Revolutionary War. Her short sentences and simple words belie the toughness of her theme that individual freedom, the philosophy on which this nation's government is based, is an easier doctrine to espouse than ensure. Each section of her book charts the progress of and deviations from the ideal. Illustrated with highlighted quotations and 400 photos. In their new booh In Sennit Of Amern a (Hyperion, $50, 307 pages, ISBN' 0780867086) ABC News anchor Peter Jennings and producer Todd Brewster focus on Defining little-know- n 1 1 rt o specific activities occurring within each of six towns Aiken, South Carolina; Boulder, Colorado; Washington, 1). C; Plano, Texas; Gary, Indiana; and Salt Lake City, Utah. From watching these activities and noting how the towns citizens respond to them, the authors deduce certain truths about the American character. For example, the push to put religion in or keep it out of the Aiken school system reveals the struggle between science raging but and faith, moral relativism and absolutes. Visits to the other cities enable the authors to speculate on how a broad spectrum of the population views the role of government, capitalism and globalization, entertainment and popular culture, race and immigration. Rich in photographs, the book is further enhanced by breezily written profiles of people from other parts of the country. It is doubtful that In Search Of America teaches us anything that a reasonably intelligent adult wouldnt already know. But it does bring our own beliefs about the nature of America into sharper focus. In aired a September, ABC-Tcompanion series to this book. A collection of photos meant to reveal the American character (and how little it has changed ), America Yesterday and Today by Blythe Hamer (Carlton, $40, 256 pages, ISBN 1842225774) has just enough text to sketch in highlights of the nations history of the last hundred years or so. As visualized here, that character manifests itself in sections titled Free American Time, Classics, Sports & The Entertainment, The Great Outdoors, With Celebrations. and City, "Everyday Living few exceptions, the images range from benign to uplifting. Even photos of social protest such as those contrasting opposition to the Vietnam War and to the World Trade Organization show no heads being cracked or blood flowing. The fallen World Trade Center is detectable only by the faraway smoke from its unseen ruins. Many of the shots come with built-ilaughs: the bathing beauties of the 1920s standing as it were, with their bikini-cla- d the that proclaims tough guy wearing a Satan Sucks; the skateboarders using garbage bags for sails. More pleasant than provocative, Amerua Yesterday and Today is a scrapbook for a nation, with scenes from our daily lives that illuminate who we were, and are. Hiroshima but, upon learning more, began telling his students: Thank God for for his Truman Harry courage and decisiveness." He details why he came to praise rather than condemn the robber barons who mined millions of dollars in BY ALAN PRINCE financing the first transcontinental railroad. And he College professors sometimes wish for the impossible: an opportunity to explains how he evolved class to correct or amend lectures they delivfrom an admitted Nixon e ered years ago. A hater to someone with a university teacher for 35 years before retiring from academia genuine appreciation of the historian Stephen seven years ago, disgraced president. Ambrose came as close as one can to achievTo America is a mixture of interpretive history, personing that feat before his death in October. I Shortly before his death on al recollection and want to correct all the mistakes I made in parental Od. 1 3, popular historian the classroom, he said, in explaining his decimusings from one of our Ambrose Stephen completed countrys most popular hission to w rite To America: Personal Reflections work on his last book. torians with of a Historian. subiects I did not For instance, acknowledging To America. ranging from Thomas know then what J do now, Ambrose says in Jefferson (an intellectual his final work that, contrary to what generacoward for doing nothing about slavery) to Lyndon Johnson, from racialism to tions of students have been taught, it was disease not a deliberate policy of genocide that wiped out many womens rights, from war heroes to explorers. Ambrose also shares the work habit that resulted in his Indian tribes as the government pushed the frontier writing or westward. At first, he denounced the bombing of editing some 30 books, a number of which sped from FAREWELL Final words from a beloved historian full-tim- g 8 BOOKPAGE DECEMBER 2002 six-pa- rt n cheek-to-chee- born-agai- n the bindery to lists: You do it by working hard, six to 10 hours per day, six or seven days a week. edi- He was also helped by tin services of an tor; his wife Moira listened to his readings E. of whatever he wrote each day and offered her suggestions. Thus, his advice to aspiring authors: Marry an English major." Ambrose wrote To America after learning in April that he had lung cancer. Unsure how long he would live, he set aside other work to write this final book, which he described as his best which means better than such blockbusters as Undaunted Courage, Citizen Soldiers and June 6, 1944. Whether or not To America is his best work, its pages certainly pulsate with the spirit and optimism of an author who was deeply in love with America. 1' best-sell- STEPHEN AMBROSE |