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The American Future
The American Future
The American Future
Audiobook15 hours

The American Future

Written by Simon Schama

Narrated by Rupert Degas

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

“With eloquence, wit, passion, and irony, The American Future traces the history of an idea: that of our national destiny….A book of beautiful writing, peppered with wisecracks, slashed with rapier thrusts.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

 

A De Tocqueville for the 21st century, Simon Schama, NBCC Award winning author of  Rough Crossings offers an essential, historical, long view analysis of the American character in The American Future. Shama examines four themes—war, race and faith, immigration, and custodianship of the land—through the prism of the historic 2008 presidential election in a magnificent work that the Wall Street Journal calls a “celebration of American resiliency.” Niall Ferguson says, “I hope Obama will have this book on his bedside table.”
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateMay 19, 2009
ISBN9780061894275
Author

Simon Schama

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. His award-winning books include Scribble, Scribble, Scribble; The American Future: A History; National Book Critics Circle Award winner Rough Crossings; The Power of Art; The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age; Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution; Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations); Landscape and Memory; Rembrandt's Eyes; and the History of Britain trilogy. He has written and presented forty television documentary films for the BBC, PBS, and The History Channel, including the Emmy-winning Power of Art, on subjects that range from John Donne to Tolstoy.

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Rating: 3.6 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The Future of Americanism Through the Past If you have never read Simon Schama before, you don't know what good writing looks like. In "The American Future," Schama explores the essentials of American exceptionalism. Not really a straight narrative history, but more of an extended op-ed essay about the continuities of ideologies that extend throughout the founding of the republic up until the present.The book is divided into four sections, militarism, religion, immigration, and expansion. The essence of the American story is found in each of these themes. Schama does an exceptional job weaving the contemporary and the historical into a single continuous narrative. The story of the Meigs family is symbolic of the American military tradition that extends through multiple generations. Religious pluralism, the foundations of both the positive and negative qualities of humanity. The age of immigration introduces us to concepts of inclusion, exclusion, race, language, and culture. Finally, the long tradition of imperialism on the frontier and beyond.While nothing about the historical background and significance is new, it is Schama's writing that stands out. The art of writing is more than just making a point and Schama's choice of words and combination of metaphor and illustration is really magnificent.Overall, you really can't go wrong with "The American Future." The book is all of educational, philosophical, reflective, and entertaining. Free from the ideological constraints of the left or the right, but rather with an observant eye and the stroke of a pen. Schama hits the nail right on the head, "The American Future" is a can't miss.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This kind of seemed like Schama’s “stuff I like about American history” book; I understand it’s based on a four-part documentary, and maybe it worked better that way. As a book, it moved backwards and forwards through American history connected by broad themes (and occasionally by family histories, especially the Meigs family): military service, slavery and its legacy, religion, immigration, optimism about the promise of the West. Maybe my reaction was also influenced by Schama’s immediate-post-Obama optimism that he’d just seen an amazing revitalization of the American dream, but I didn’t get much of a sense of coherence.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The American FutureSimon Schama’s new book, The American Future: A History, is an attempt to interpret the watershed election of 2008 through the longer lens of American history. Schama’s approach, however, is rambling, weaving episodic historical and personal anecdotes in a sort of time-machine kaleidoscope of thoughts. Whatever unifying themes he was attempting to convey were obscured by this approach.In addition, Schama’s writing reveals that he was caught up in the political rhetoric, resulting in a biased and unbalanced perspective.In time, we’ll understand the political currents at play during what seems at this point a key juncture in American politics – but we’ll need to wait a bit longer for that.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    So you think you know American History pretty well?You might be persuaded otherwise after reading Simon Schama’s The American Future.The book starts out with the story of Montgomery Meigs, the first in a long line of patriots in service to our country from the very beginning of our beginnings until the present day. How did Americans miss this great story? From those members of the Meigs military dynasty who were convinced that the American government’s course was right, to those who thought the government had taken a seriously wrong detour along the way, and some Meigs’in between, all of whom in the name of duty and love of country did what they could to reconcile their personal cognitive dissonance and give their all, including their lives, for America. What I want to know is this: Why isn’t Montgomery Meigs as well known as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Frederick Von Steuben or Thaddeus Kosciuszko?Along the way the story lags, meanders and jumps a little but it covers some crucial ground that should be required reading for every school child. It includes the early settlement records of Georgia and Texas that I had already seen with my own eyes while doing genealogical research. Along the way we meet Fannie Lou Hamer (if we haven’t known her before) and get re-acquainted with Grover Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Although my personal experience and opinions do not always match Simon Schama’s take on things and the meanderings are sometimes too “Tom Wolfe” for my tastes as I prefer my non-fiction plain, we have to ask:Why are Americans so ignorant about our own history? We have attempted to clean it up for our schoolchildren with terms like “resettlement” and “land grants” but don’t we have public libraries? Don’t we have Simon Schama? Aren’t we adults yet?The author takes us through the fear between the gunpowder explosions, the sorrow of broken families with conflicting alliances, broken promises, disgusting displays of inhumanity (but thankfully without too many graphic descriptions), individual determination to see ideals and dreams realized no matter what the cost, and the creativity and genius used for both good or greed of what we like to believe is purely American.Simon Schama can be forgiven if he occasionally gets it wrong. Teddy Roosevelt was nowhere near Buffalo, NY when he received word of McKinley’s death: He was in the Adirondack Mountains on the opposite end of the state and was sworn in as the new president near my hometown in North Creek, NY, at the railroad station when word of the former president’s death reached him.The author ends on an optimistic note although I don’t see how he suddenly got there. Maybe he should have included a map for us to follow along with him to that place.