America Reborn: A Twentieth-Century Narrative in Twenty-Six Lives

Admittedly, ever since Alexis de Tocqueville wrote "Democracy in America" the bar has been set high for those wishing to dissect and explain the American psyche. Though not aspiring to do any such thing, journalist Martin Walker has come very close to it by encapsulating the essential and enduring features that define the American character. "I suspect that this book began unconsciously as a love letter to America from a foreigner who sees it both as a second home and as an inspiration." Thus Mr. Walker begins "America Reborn," and what follows is a chronicle of the twentieth century as marked by the lasting footprints of twenty-six larger-than-life Americans. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt's ambition and ending with Bill Clinton's new America, "America Reborn" is a sweeping narrative that couples people with their impacts on American life-Roosevelt with ambition, Woodrow Wilson with idealism, William Pershing with the army, and so on. But Mr. Walker knows that there is more to America than politics: his book includes such diverse personalities as Babe Ruth, Duke Ellington, John Steinbeck, Walt Disney, Lucky Luciano, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Katherine Hepburn. In the end, the book does feel like a "love letter to America." But it is not the kind of love which would blind the author; perhaps, it resembles that of Emma Goldman, one of Mr. Walker's heroes: "the kind of patriotism we represent is the kind which loves America with open eyes. Our relation to America is the same as the relation of a man who loves a woman, who is enchanted by her beauty and yet who cannot be blind to her defects." It this simultaneous love and concern which makes the book both candid and remarkably enjoying.

This is one of the most enjoyable as well as one of the most informative books I have read in recent years. Walker's purpose is to "describe and explain the American century through the lives and careers of a handful of individual Americans." He discusses 26, each whom he views as representative of a specific component within the evolution of American civilization. For example, Teddy Roosevelt (Ambition), Emma Goldman (Dissidence), Woodrow Wilson (Idealism), William Boeing (Air Transportation), Lucky Luciano (Crime), Katherine Hepburn (Stardom), and Alan Greenspan (Banking). One of my favorites of the 22 essays is that which discusses Walt Disney (representative of American Entertainment). Walker first quotes Joseph Nye: "Soft power occurs when one country gets other countries to want what it wants, in contrast with the `hard' or coercive power of ordering others to do what it wants." In response, he suggests that "the essence of America's new global hegemony was that the United States was not only the unique military superpower but also the dominant soft superpower, which [because of Disney's films] invented the world's dreams and defined its aspirations....The Disney Corporation has become the heartland of soft culture's colonial realm. It is unmatched in pillaging there cultures of others to repackage them in Disney's universal vocabulary....[Disney] aimed for what he once described as `that deathless, ageless, absolutely primitive remnant of something in every world-wracked human being which makes us play with children's toys and laugh without self-consciousness at silly things....You know, the Mickey in us'." These brief excerpts correctly indicate Walker's highly subjective and yet circumspect perspective on 22 quite unique Americans. I have already mentioned eight. The others are "Black Jack" Pershing, Henry Ford, Babe Ruth, Duke Ellington, Winston Churchill, Frank Lloyd Wright, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Walter Reuther, John Steinbeck, Albert Einstein, George Marshall, William F. Buckley, Jr., Richard Bissell, Billy Graham, Richard Nixon, Martin Luther King, Jr., Betty Friedan, and Bill Clinton. If your desire is to understand America in the 20th century, I cannot think of another combination of lives and careers which will contribute more to that understanding than do those whom Walker discusses with eloquence and insight in this remarkable volume.

This chronicle of the 20th century uses over twenty lives as a foundation for examining cultural trends, social issues, and daily life in America. Participants featured herein include presidents, artists, entertainers, soldiers, criminals an numberous others drawn from all walks of life. The diversity of social and economic stratas makes for an exceptional presentation.

This book gets my vote as the best single history of 20th century America, simply because it is so readable. History is not about great sweeping flows and the tidal forces of social and economic change but about people, about individuals, and what they made of the world they encountered. This book explores the American century through a thoughtfully-chosen group of individuals: the film stars and criminals, the spies and generals, the preachers and bankers, the dreamers and the dissidents. And the author takes us from the particular to the general, putting those deeper social forces into the background where they belong. I never knew that modern US aviation depended on William Boeing not only for his airplanes, but because he also founded United Airlines. I never knew that evangelist Billy Graham was such an intense political animal, or that John Steinbeck was suspected of communist subversion by the FBI, or that Richard Nixon was by most counts a liberal politician, or that Emma Goldman tried to raise funds for the revolutionary cause as a prostitute. I had also never thought about Bill Clinton in such historical terms before, nor realised that the real revolution for American women was economic rather than erotic. Beautifully written, this is a book full of delights and information, that will make you think about America while it keeps you greatly entertained.

In America Reborn, British writer Martin Walker assumes the unique perspective of examining quintessentially "American" attributes through retrospectives of twenty-six individuals. For anyone with an interest in American history, this book provides clear and interesting essays that reach from the depths of American politics (FDR and an exceptionally harsh view of Nixon), American economics (Alan Greenspan), and American international intrigue (Richard Bissell and George Marshall) to the heights of American leisure activities (Duke Ellington, Katharine Hepburn, and Walt Disney). The approximately fifteen page, tidy chapters devoted to each individual fly by with interesting tidbits of historical information and clear explanation. This British writer has provided an introspective and fascinating look into America and its personality, matching up attributes to individuals that would be, in most cases, proud to claim them.