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Cleopatra's Nose

Essays on the Unexpected

Author Daniel J. Boorstin
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Paperback
$17.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Oct 31, 1995 | 224 Pages | 9780679755180
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Discoverers and The Creators demonstrates the truth behind the aphorism that if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the face of the world would have changed. For in this provocative book, Boorstin uncovers the elements of accident, improvisation, and contradiction at the core of American institutions and beliefs ranging from an analysis of the U.S. capital to an examination of our eternal faith in progress. Among the issues he raises:

Have the ground-breaking discoveries of the last century left us paradoxically knowing less than our ancestors did?
Is America the world's most complacent society or its most conscience-ridden?
How has the "fourth kingdom," the kingdom of machines, ended up overthrowing Darwinian expectations, creating a need for the unnecessary and placing science at odds with the politics of common sense?

In Cleopatra's Nose, Boorstin answers these questions with the same wide-ranging curiosity and stylistic brio that have made him one of our most popular and widely respected historians.
Daniel J. Boorstin was the author of The Americans, a trilogy (The Colonial Experience, The National Experience, and The Democratic Experience) that won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1989, he received the National Book Award for lifetime contribution to literature. He was the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and for twelve years served as the Librarian of Congress. He died in 2004. View titles by Daniel J. Boorstin

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Discoverers and The Creators demonstrates the truth behind the aphorism that if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the face of the world would have changed. For in this provocative book, Boorstin uncovers the elements of accident, improvisation, and contradiction at the core of American institutions and beliefs ranging from an analysis of the U.S. capital to an examination of our eternal faith in progress. Among the issues he raises:

Have the ground-breaking discoveries of the last century left us paradoxically knowing less than our ancestors did?
Is America the world's most complacent society or its most conscience-ridden?
How has the "fourth kingdom," the kingdom of machines, ended up overthrowing Darwinian expectations, creating a need for the unnecessary and placing science at odds with the politics of common sense?

In Cleopatra's Nose, Boorstin answers these questions with the same wide-ranging curiosity and stylistic brio that have made him one of our most popular and widely respected historians.

Author

Daniel J. Boorstin was the author of The Americans, a trilogy (The Colonial Experience, The National Experience, and The Democratic Experience) that won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1989, he received the National Book Award for lifetime contribution to literature. He was the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, and for twelve years served as the Librarian of Congress. He died in 2004. View titles by Daniel J. Boorstin

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