Boorstin, Daniel J.

Boorstin, Daniel J. (Joseph)

(1914– ) historian; born in Atlanta, Ga. Educated at Harvard, Oxford, and Yale (J.S.D. 1940) Universities, he taught at the University of Chicago (1944–69), became director at the National Museum of Natural History (1969–75), and librarian at the Library of Congress (1975–87; librarian emeritus, 1987). Fundamentally conservative, his Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy The Americans (1958–73) reflects his preferences for people, experiences, and inventions over ideology, and his belief in history as enduring literature.