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The American: The Hidden History of Daniel J. Boorstin and His Twentieth CenturyJoin the John W. Kluge Center and the Center for the Book for a public event looking at the life of Daniel J. Boorstin, an American historian and the twelfth Librarian of Congress. This event will take place on October 21, 2026, at 4pm Eastern. Daniel Boorstin founded the Center for the Book in 1977 and it was established by Congress the same year. The Library currently has 56 affiliate centers – one in every state, plus the District of Columbia and five US territories: American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. This event will take place in person in room LJ-119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress, and will be broadcast live on Zoom. Register here to watch on Zoom. This event will feature Jon Boorstin, son of Daniel Boorstin and author of "The American," a book that is "part biography, part family history, and a crucial extension of his father’s work." What does it mean to be an American? Historian Daniel J. Boorstin, one of the most important public intellectuals of the twentieth century, spent a lifetime pondering that question. In his revelatory book "The American," Boorstin's son Jon, a novelist and Oscar-nominated filmmaker, probes this question to tell the biographical story his father never told: a chronicle of family, racial conflict, and immigrant Jewish life in twentieth-century America. Why did Boorstin—the 1974 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Americans: The Democratic Experience—write so little about himself? To answer that question, Jon Boorstin reaches back to the beginning of the 20th century and introduces readers to his immigrant grandfather, would-be southern gentleman Sam Boorstin, the youngest lawyer in Georgia's history.
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