Reading history

I'm enjoying the hell out of "The Colonial Experience," the first volume of Daniel Boorstin's history of the U.S. And yet he exhibits a glaring, if common, weakness, his treatment of Native Americans. I've also been reading a lot of American Indian history lately. Boorstin (writing 50 years ago) takes a mainstream if outdated "Indian as savage" approach much of the time. At the same time, Boorstin's history is not event-centered but a consideration of the "American character" and what formed it -- and this attitude, of course, is part of it.

This is why even a skilled historian like Boorstin must be supplemented with histories that come from other directions (and biases), like Zenn's People's History, which I plan to reread after the 3 Boorstin books. If you read widely, perhaps some sense of balance and "truth" can emerge.

What I am learning from Boorstin, what I had forgotten, is that the roots of American culture in all its preferences for practical over aesthetic themes, the roots of "the business of America is business," go deep. Seeing the consequences of this foundation much later, it's easy to forget how logical and inevitable the result actually is.  It's easy to forget that anti-intellectualism has a very deep foundation in our culture.