Hidden History: Exploring Our Secret Past was published by Harper & Row in 1987. The collection gathers essays, lectures, reviews, and occasional pieces written across Boorstin’s career, organized around his characteristic theme: the aspects of historical experience that are invisible precisely because they were so pervasive that contemporaries did not notice them — the air they breathed, the water in which they swam.
The essays range widely: from the history of American advertising (which Boorstin sees as a democratic art form, the poetry of commerce) to the nature of celebrity (which he defines, memorably, as “well-knownness” — a quality unrelated to achievement) to the invention of the calendar (which he treats as one of humanity’s most important and least appreciated intellectual achievements) to the meaning of the Bicentennial (which he uses as an occasion to reflect on the nature of American patriotism).
The collection serves as an accessible introduction to Boorstin’s thought for readers who might find the major trilogy daunting. Each essay is self-contained, but the cumulative effect is a portrait of an extraordinarily well-read, widely curious mind that refuses to accept conventional categories — a historian who finds the history of the hotel as intellectually interesting as the history of the Revolution.
Collecting Hidden History
First edition (Harper & Row, New York, 1987): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $10–$25
- Very good/very good: $5–$12