By piecing the lives of selected individuals into a grand mosaic, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel J. Boorstin explores the development of artistic innovation over 3,000 years. A hugely ambitious chronicle of the arts that Boorstin delivers with the scope that made his Discoverers a national bestseller. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Historian Daniel J. Boorstin brings his customary depth and range to this compelling book on Western art, taking on everything from European megaliths (Stonehenge, for example) to Benjamin Franklin's autobiography ("the first American addition to world literature"). Boorstin does not aim at being comprehensive--he much prefers to linger over certain "heroes of the imagination" as he surveys human accomplishment in the fields of architecture, music, painting, sculpting, and writing--yet The Creators certainly feels comprehensive, as Boorstin carefully places everything he describes within a grand tradition of aesthetic achievement.
Boorstin knows that good history demands good writing, and his prose makes this big book easy to absorb. "This is a story," he writes, "of how creators in all the arts have enlarged, embellished, fantasized, and filigreed our experience"--an apt description of the role art plays in our life and an equally apt description of the way Boorstin interprets it for readers. (The Creators also is the second volume of a trilogy that starts with The Discoverers and concludes with The Seekers, although none of these books requires any knowledge of the others.) --John J. Miller
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
High quality:
Great product. Found detail about the book great and was enough information for what I needed to know. Received the book in time and found to be good quality.
A splendid distillation of a liberal education:
Question: I read well enough, but don't feel all that well educated. I am too busy or too broke to take college
classes in the evening or whatever. Can acquire a fair bit of liberal education by reading in my spare time? Answer: Yes. Read Boorstin's "The Creators" and "The Discoverers," and Barzun's "From Dawn to Decadence." You will thereby encounter what is glorious about us humans.
The Discoverers for the more artistically minded:
The Creators by Daniel Boorstin is an excellant read. This book was more reader friendly then The Discoverers and just as well researched. As Boorstin does in the Discoverers, each chapter tells the life story of an artist/musician/architech and while doing this goes in depth on this person's works. The areas of focus for this book are:
1. "The Riddle of Creation" (creation stories in differant cultures)
a. Worlds without beginnings (eastern religions)
b. A creator-god (mostly... more info
one of the greats:
Most books I read, I think, are on an intellectual level commensurate with my own. Usually I think, "I could probably write this, if I took the time to learn enough." This book is not one of those. Sure, maybe Daniel didn't pull every bit directly out of his head- he was the Librarian of Congress, which gave him access to plenty of source material. I don't think I could ever come close to matching this, or any other of Boorstin's achievements. Read this book! It's not as engaging as some- I got... more info
