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

Walker, Martin

3.44

27 ratings by Goodreads

9780375403163: America Reborn: A Twentieth-Century Narrative in Twenty-Six Lives

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375403167 ISBN 13: 9780375403163

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2000

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Here is the story of America in the twentieth century as told through the lives of twenty-six of its most remarkable and historically crucial men and women.

The people Martin Walker has chosen to portray are presidents, industrialists, artists, thinkers, entertainers, soldiers, spies, criminals, and evangelists, among others, and he makes the life of each individual serve as a framework for a discussion of the nation as a whole in a century when it was reinventing itself.

Through Theodore Roosevelt, Walker examines America's ambition; through Woodrow Wilson, our idealism; through FDR, our triumph on the world stage; through Richard Nixon, our retreat into cynicism; through Bill Clinton, globalization and controversy about the right way to use America's unprecedented power.

In Henry Ford he finds the creator of both the mass-market product and the mass-market consumer, and in Walt Disney, the revolutionizer not only of America's entertainment but also of the world's. William Boeing is the innovator who spurs the behemoth of American aviation; Walter Reuther defines labor's struggles; George C. Marshall represents the spread of America's economic genius in a war-ravaged Europe.

In the lives of Duke Ellington, Frank Lloyd Wright, Katharine Hepburn, and John Steinbeck, Walker traces America's far-reaching cultural influences. Babe Ruth leads to a consideration of the role of sports in our society; William F. Buckley, Jr., to a discussion of conservatism; Martin Luther King, Jr., to matters of race; Betty Friedan to the shifting role of women; Billy Graham to an examination of religion; Emma Goldman to minority viewpoints and dissent; Black Jack Pershing to the place of the military; Lucky Luciano to crime and corruption; Albert Einstein to immigration; Richard Bissell to spies and the intelligence network; Alan Greenspan to finance and banking; and Winston Churchill to the American diaspora.

At once intimate and wide-ranging, America Reborn is an altogether engrossing work of narrative history.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

"Boasts wise, original insights rendered in glowing prose."-"The Washington Post Book World
""Readable and thoughtful.... [Walker has] a shrewd eye for the significance of people we otherwise take for granted."-"The New York Times Book Review
"
"One gets from Walker a lucid vision of American utopianism."-"The""Boston Globe
"

Boasts wise, original insights rendered in glowing prose. The Washington Post Book World
Readable and thoughtful . [Walker has] a shrewd eye for the significance of people we otherwise take for granted. The New York Times Book Review

One gets from Walker a lucid vision of American utopianism. The Boston Globe
"

About the Author:

Martin Walker served as bureau chief for Britain's The Guardian in Washington, D.C., and other postings before retiring as the paper's assistant editor. A regular commentator on CNN, Inside Washington, and NPR, he is also a contributing editor of the Los Angeles Times. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and The New Republic, and was awarded Britain's Reporter of the Year prize. He is a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute in New York and has lectured at many American universities. Walker is the author of six books, including The President We Deserve and The Cold War: A History. He is married, has two daughters, and lives in Europe.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.