THE AMERICAN

The Hidden HIstory of Daniel J. Boorstin and His Twentieth Century

University of Georgia Press — 8/1/26

“Daniel Boorstin was one of the great American historians. In this remarkable blend of memoir and biography, his son, Jon, traces an extraordinary life through family history, archival discovery, and personal memory. The American is beautifully written, richly researched, and utterly compelling.”
—Nick Witham, author of Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America

The American

Author Jon Boorstin

I have the blessing and the burden of being Daniel J. Boorstin’s son. He was a ‘distinguished historian’ when that meant something: the world cared what he thought about America and Americans, and took it out on me.

I fled from Harvard to Hollywood, blessed land of Daniel J. Boorstin ignorance. There I earned the attention of world class Tinsel Town tutors, thanks to skills I’d learned surviving Daniel J. Boorstin. The designer Charles Eames godfathered me into documentary filmmaking, enlisting me to make this film about an unknown architect named Frank Gehry, and this Oscar®-nominated film on the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Robert Redford made me a producer on All The President’s Men, and its director Alan Pakula also directed the thriller I wrote, Dream Lover.

I morphed into writing novels, from Pay or Play (“the definitive sendup of Hollywood” – Publishers Weekly) to The Newsboys’ Lodging-house, in which the philosopher William James discovers his Will to Believe (winner of the New York Society Library Book Award for Historical Fiction). William James, my father’s favorite philosopher.

I finally sat down and faced Daniel J. Boorstin head on.

Read an Excerpt from The Preface

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PRAISE FOR ‘THE AMERICAN’

“The American is a fascinating blend of history, memoir, biography, and family history. It sheds significant light on the life of one of the most influential historians of the United States.”

— Daniel Geary, author of Beyond Civil Rights and Radical Ambition

“This is a hopeful book for the post-Trump era, a reminder of how we once believed, and can still believe, that what binds us together is greater than what divides us.”

— Steve J. Ross, author of Pulitzer-finalist Hitler in Los Angeles

“When novelist and filmmaker Jon Boorstin turns his talent to biography, his storytelling skill is the secret sauce. And because this is a biography of an influential American historian—his father, Daniel J. Boorstin—the way it refracts American history through family history makes its telling a moving and wildly original work.”

— Marty Kaplan, director, the Norman Lear Center at USC