An American Primer

An aspect of this excellent work that differentiates it a bit from some other compilations is the inclusion of texts which no longer can be considered fundaments of an American philosophical or political self-conception, but which mattered immensely in earlier times. The previous reviewer listed Wendell Wilkie's One World. Other examples would be: Mary Baker Eddy - Science and Health James Cardinal Gibbons - the Question of the Knights of Labor or Lincoln Steffens - the Shame of the Cities The ideas contained in these texts may no longer have a direct impact on American popular thinking, for better or worse, but certainly they figured largely in public debate, at one time. It might have been useful to include a tirade against Freemasonry, as paranoia about that movement is widely agreed to have thrown an American presidential election. In fact, if readers construe this book as a collection of texts forming the basis of popular debate, from time to time in America, the compiler could be faulted for not including pieces by Roger Williams, William Penn, Marx, Freud, Tolstoy and others who were born and bred elsewhere, and may never have set foot in America. But Boorstin chose to limit his reach to the native children of what is now the United States.

Included in this volume are fundamental documents of American political life, from the Mayflower compact of 1620, and including the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, Washington's Farewell Address, Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, William James Pragmatism, Wendell Wilkie's One World Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance, John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address. There are eighty- three selections which touch upon American political , economic and cultural history. The documents are analyzed by eminent historians including Daniel Boorstin, Samuel Eliot Morrison, David Potter, Martin Marty, Dumas Malone, Clinton Rossiter, Leonard W. Levy,and others. The volume has an introduction by Daniel Boorstin. This work provides American education in one volume. I dip into it sometimes and read here and there one of the documents, and its analysis.