The Americans: The Democratic Experience was published by Random House in 1973 and won the Pulitzer Prize for History. The final volume of the trilogy covers the period from the Civil War through the early 1970s — the era in which American democracy ceased to be primarily a political system and became a way of life.
Boorstin’s thesis is that the most significant democratization in American history occurred not in politics (voting rights, civil rights) but in consumption: the development of technologies and institutions that made goods, experiences, and information available to everyone. The department store democratized fashion. Canned food and refrigeration democratized nutrition. The automobile democratized mobility. Radio and television democratized entertainment. The Sears catalog democratized commerce. Each of these developments broke down distinctions that had previously separated classes — distinctions of dress, diet, transportation, and access to culture.
The book’s most searching chapters address the consequences of this democratization: the homogenization of American life (if everyone wears the same clothes and eats the same food, what distinguishes one person from another?), the replacement of experience with packaging (Boorstin’s concept of the “pseudo-event,” developed in The Image, is extended here to the entire consumer economy), and the paradox that a society organized around the satisfaction of desire produces not contentment but anxiety.
Collecting The Americans: The Democratic Experience
First edition (Random House, New York, 1973): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $30–$80
- Very good/very good: $10–$30
- Signed: $60–$150